


Displacement

by ErwinsRightEyebrow



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Real World, Canon Levi crosses into a modern world, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, I Wrote This While Listening to Hozier's Music, Light Angst, Original Character(s), Romance, Slice of Life, Smut, Strong Female Characters, Vignette
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 28
Words: 37,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29247057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErwinsRightEyebrow/pseuds/ErwinsRightEyebrow
Summary: When an expedition outside of the Walls goes foul, Survey Corps Captain Levi is thrown into a world without Titans where he stays with a gentle high school physics teacher. Here, he begins to take steps toward healing from the trauma and loss he's felt over his years at war. But Levi is still a soldier back home, and the choice between inner peace and duty to humanity will not be an easy one.
Relationships: Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)/Reader, Levi Ackerman & Reader
Comments: 36
Kudos: 152





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This work was reposted on Archive of Our Own from my original account: @ErwinsRightEyebrow on Wattpad. Any account posting my content on any site besides ErwinsRightEyebrow on Wattpad or Archive of Our Own is plagiarizing. The only changes that have been made from this work in its transferring to Archive of Our Own are the chapter titles and major grammatical errors.

The left block of Levi's omni-dimensional maneuvering gear was completely busted. Smoke wafted out of the back end, and the front end had a massive dent on the corner. With one hand on his ribcage, Levi leaned with momentary weakness against the tree behind him. His heart pounded. No one else was around to help him; everyone was on the other side of the woods, probably a half-mile away by now, and running the distance was too risky.

He could see three titans off in the distance as he looked over the clearing in front of him. Three titans running his way—not at him, but certainly in his direction. No extra blades; they'd been damaged while resting in his 3DMG , and the two on his other side were busted too. He only had the one, and even though he could work with just one blade, it wasn't worth anything if he couldn't use his 3DMG to get up to the titan's height.

He went for a sprint to his right. Breaking through the tall grass, he made way for the abandoned house two hundred feet or so ahead. If he could get to shelter, he'd wait out the rest of the day and run the six or so miles home at night—when the titans weren't active. He stumbled over the mushy ground. His ribcage tightened with each breath. He keeps his eyes shifting—right, to the trees; left, to the plains. He saw a pink, fleshy mass of a titan as it traversed the plains in dumb idleness. The titan walking in that area didn't notice Levi as he rushed up against the door. Levi breathed out for a moment, swung around, and shook the door handle. Locked.

He broke through the window and tumbled in, crunched over in an attempt to save his legs from any real damage from the glass. His body rolled onto the wooden floors and, at last, landed on a rug beneath the kitchen table. Do titans have good hearing? he wondered as he looked at the shattered window.

Levi closed his eyes and made a point to breathe slowly. In... out... in... out... He felt the heaviness of his lungs dissipate. His body cooled down just a bit. He'd been so hot but he hadn't realized it until now, after the moment. His arm still throbbed; he'd beat it up against a tree while trying to catch his own fall. Each motion of his elbow sent shocks up and down his arms, making him wince. But he was alive, and that was more important than anything else. He certainly wasn't worth anything if he was dead.

He wished titans were heavier than they were. He couldn't hear a thing. Levi occasionally opened one eye to see if a titan was bent over and peeking through the window at him.

At this point, Levi had been on an expedition outside of the Walls. It had been going smoothly at first, only turning sour when a barrage of titans bursted through Levi's squad formation. To keep the rest of his squad safe, especially Armin and Eren, Levi commanded the squad to move forward without him. He was knocked into a tree after two titans came up on him and he could only get out of dodge of one. But the knock against the tree smashed his gear and, at this point, made him too far out for the regiment to retrieve him. No horse either; she got torn up when Levi moved away to kill the first few titans.

He stood up at some point, after a long period of feeling himself breathing, and took a look around the home. It was an ancient-seeming house in comparison to those behind the walls, but it somehow hadn't decayed in that time. The walls were still intact. The only broken window was the one Levi had shattered. There was no sink in the kitchen, and through the kitchen window he could see a water pump. He hadn't seen a water pump for inside water use in a long time. There were no family portraits in little frames around the room—but a single wooden plate sat on the kitchen table, acting as the only real sign that someone had ever been in the room. Levi imagined a family at the table—a man, his wife, and their child all eating together, smiling together, laughing together.

He had done this in Shiganshina too; in the calm spots during their mission to recapture Wall Maria, he sometimes dipped his head into old homes when no one else was looking. He knew it would hurt him every time he looked, but he always did. Something always existed in every household—an indication that someone had lived and maybe had even been happy in that home. Once, he saw hatches in the doorway of one home to mark the height of two different children, one just a baby. He also saw things like shoes by the front doors, cups with wine stains in them, dirty laundry in a back corner, a wilted plant at the window sill.

Part of him wondered if he would ever have more than one pair of shoes by the front door. Would he even have a front door? Maybe he wouldn't get the chance before he died, like Erwin. Erwin wanted children. He'd talked about it a hundred times with Levi—but Levi never relayed back any of his feelings about a world outside of this fight for survival. Levi sighed. Erwin never got what he wanted, he realized.

A crack came from the corner of the house—toward the other room. It grew louder, reaching more of the house. Levi's eyes widened. He dropped the plate and looked up. The light touched a titan's flesh as it peeled open the roof and began to look in on Levi. When they made eye-contact, the titan ripped the roof completely away.

Levi sprang away from the first reach of the titan. The floor smashed into dirt. His eyes then went to the far side of the house. There was a hatch to the basement in the corner. He heard the heavy breathing of the titan as it reached its arms out again. With one hand on his 3DMG, Levi sprang for the hatch and pried it open. He slipped inside, snapping the door shut—boom! He bumped down the stairs to safety.

But the back of his head smacked the bottom step as he flew down. The blow knocked Levi totally unconscious; so, in the dark basement, everything grew even darker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to the content of this work being mostly fluff and domesticity, the chapters will be shorter; however, I will be posting more frequently (two or three chapters when I would normally post one).  
> My name is Maria. My pronouns are they/them. Please respect that.


	2. In Which Levi Wakes Up in a Strange Place

When Levi awoke, he was cold and damp. He opened his eyes and, seeing nothing, thought, 'I've gone blind, haven't I? I shouldn't have moved so fast.' He moved his head up to look around instinctually but stopped when he realized he probably couldn't see anything anyway. His head hurt. He sat up weakly, grunting as he did so, and pressed his uninjured hand to the back of his head. There was a small lump, but he didn't feel dizzy or nauseous, so he figured becoming blind was the only real damage he received in hitting his head. 'I can't see, but at least I don't have a concussion,' he thought with snark.

He ran over his name, his age, his occupation, his location—all to make sure he hadn't suffered memory deficits. Levi lay back down, feeling a tenseness in his back that was only calmed when he leaned back.

A pop came from above and, suddenly, he saw light! His heart sprang a bit. He heard a click. Even then, lights around him flickered and showed the basement... a room so completely unfamiliar that he felt he wasn't even in the cottage anymore.

He heard a scream. A shrill "Oh, my god!" followed.

Levi sprang around, falling on his back as he beheld, at the top of the stone stairs, a woman with her hand on her heart.

"Who are you?" she screeched. "Why are you in my house?"

He held his hands up in calm surrender. "I don't know." His elbow made a noise then, and he groaned and took his arm down and cradled it against his chest. "Am I dead?"

The gasping woman paused for a moment to observe him as he held his arm. "What's wrong with your arm?"

"I don't know, dammit," he hissed, shutting his eyes.

"You're bleeding too..." She dashed away and returned with a first aid kit in one hand and, in the other, a large kitchen knife. She set the first aid kit down at the top of the stairs. With careful steps, she moved down the stairs. "I'm going to help you, and then you have to leave. I have a knife. Are you going to try to hurt me?"

"I don't think I could if I wanted to."

She took the answer with care. "Okay... Can you come upstairs?"

Levi grunted but was able to stand. He reached out a hand for a bit of help, weak from trauma to his ribs, and the woman came by his side and aided him with one arm. Levi didn't even think to question how a woman like her—essentially unarmed (besides the knife), without any 3DMG—was alive after the roof had been torn away. He noticed it, but perhaps he'd been moved without his knowledge and tossed into some other cottage basement, an inhabited basement. Maybe he'd been tossed into an underground city outside the Walls. It wasn't impossible.

They entered a vastly different (and perfectly intact) ground floor at that moment. Levi stopped in his tracks. "Where am I...?" he whispered, not really expecting any reply.

The woman guided him to a room that resembled a kitchen but was decorated with many more amenities than Levi could imagine. Certainly it was more than what he'd seen in the cottage he'd entered for safety from the titans. The woman scooted out a chair and told him to sit, and she took up the first aid kit and began to remove certain things she needed to help Levi with his injuries.

The room was painted an olive-green color with a hint of light blue. Levi sat at a wooden table with wooden chairs and, at its center, a bowl full of unfamiliar food on top of a doily. The counter-space on the other side of the room had a hunk of metal with a pot on top, and another hunk of metal taller than he was hummed and whirred a bit where it sat. The windows were decorated with small, lush plants in terra-cotta pots, small frames, and a few sloppy-looking vases and other pieces of art. The whole room had a lively, lush glow to it as the sunlight broke through the windows and spread across the floor. Levi hadn't seen a sun so bright in so long that he couldn't stop staring at the sky through the window over the sink.

"You said you don't know where you are?" the woman said softly as she came toward him with a cotton ball in hand. She held out her free hand for Levi to take in his. "Keep your arms where I can see them, please. You have a few cuts on your head here, so I'm going to clean those up. This might sting."

After a reluctant moment of thought, he placed his hand in hers. She curled her fingers—the softest fingers he'd ever felt—around his hand so he could squeeze if he needed to.

"I don't recognize anything here. Am I on Marley?"

Her face scrunched a bit. "Marley? This is Seattle."

"Where is Seattle?" Levi winced as the cold, damp cotton ball touched his forehead. "Am I still on Paradis?

"I've never heard of Paradis. I'm sorry. How did you get in my basement?"

Levi thought for a moment. Slowly, he explained, "My squadron and I were on a mission outside of the Three Walls. I was being chased by a titan... My 3DMG broke and I went into a cottage, and the titan lifted the roof. I went to the basement for safety and... now I'm here. But this isn't the cottage I went into earlier."

She stepped back and looked him over with a puzzled stare. "Are you...? No... No, you're not." She scoffed.

"Am I what?"

"I had a student this year who loaned me his favorite book—a comic. Attack on Titan, something like that." She forced a laugh. "That's silly."

"So you do know what titans are?"

"Yes, but they're fictional."

His face firmed. "They are definitely not. I've been killing titans for more than ten years."

"I think you're playing a joke on me..." She let go of his hand and reached back. She set her fingers on the handle of the knife sitting on the counter behind her.

"I have my uniform on, my 3DMG gear." A vein popped in Levi's forehead. He reached one hand down and pulled on the trigger of the working side of his gear. A cable shot out with a bang! pop! and crack!

The woman yelped and swung the knife out in front of her with trembling hands. Levi kept his eyes on the cable, which he had shot into the wall next to the tall, whirring hunk of metal. He wondered, If I look at her, perhaps she'll think I'm moving to hurt her.

"The gear is real. Titans are real. My name is Levi Ackerman. I am Survey Corps Squad Captain of the Special Operations Squad—a military captain."

"You undo that right now! T-the—the wall thing," she demanded with a shaky voice.

He pressed a button, and the gable slipped back into his gearbox with a hard clack. "You'll want to patch up that wall somehow."

"Stop talking!"

"Do you believe me? Do you believe what I'm saying?" he asked heavily. "I need someone to believe me. I don't know where I am."

She hesitated for a long time, saying neither a yes nor a no. Levi he gave her a somewhat pleading look to ease her. She didn't trust him, and he didn't trust her, but he needed someone to believe him. He may not have known where he was, but he knew wasn't where he was supposed to be.

He took a moment and looked her over. His focus stayed mainly on her outfit. She wore a skirt with big buttons up the center, and tucked into that she had on a white shirt with no ornaments or designs. The material looked strange and smooth and so unfamiliar that he wanted to touch it and see what it was made of. The woman wore no shoes. Her hair was black, like his, but it was longer and curly. In the heat, it looked more frizzy than anything else. She had a beautiful, gentle, unscarred, face. It was unmarred by the terror that Levi saw on all the within the Walls. He suddenly was sure that she wasn't lying when she said that titans didn't exist.

"I..." she sucked in a breath. "I do believe you."


	3. In Which Vera Shows Levi a Little Kindness

"You can wear this for the time being. It's a sling." She scoffed suddenly. "I'm sorry—I'm sure you know what a sling is. I didn't read much of the book you're in. I don't know what kind of technology really exists in your world."

Levi held up the blue garment-like thing. It was made of a coarse material that almost made his skin itch when he touched it. "I've never seen a sling in one piece. They're usually made of bandages."

"You put it on like this..." The woman, who had earlier introduced herself as Vera, moved around Levi and began to put the sling on him. She gently took his arms and slid it into the sling compartment, closed it at its velcro strap, and gently patted his chest. "There you go. I can take you to the doctor soon if you'd like."

"I'll be fine." He looked around the room. "This place is a mess."

"That's quite rude," she told him.

"It's true."

"What's so dirty about it?"

"The plates on the sink, the pots on the... That is a stove, isn't it?"

"It is."

"Those pots. There's a spot on that thing there." He pointed to the refrigerator, the whirring hunk of metal. "Dust on the two chairs across the table, dust on the window sill, and a spot on the floor there."

"Then you can clean it, if it irritates you so much." She sighed. "I had to grab something from the basement. Feel free to look around if you'd like. You'll be staying here for a bit, so you may as well."

Before Levi could reply, she ducked into the basement and bounced down the stairs. He could hear the stairs creaking as she did, but he couldn't hear much else than that. After a moment of hesitation, realizing she wouldn't be back for a few minutes, he took a look around. His first destination was the front room (the kitchen was in the back of the house). Most houses in his world were smaller—having just the one large room as a kitchen and gathering area, and then bedrooms. This was different. The stairs went not just to the basement, but also up to a second floor. Levi wondered how rich a woman Vera must have been.

The floors were wood, but the front room had a large area rug that separated the furniture and the dark floors. The rug and the furniture were all beige with gold decorations; the pillows had golden tassels, the rug had ornate, golden designs in it, and the frames on the hearth and the dark wood end tables were also gold. The bay window at the front had white cushions as well so that someone could sit on the sill and peer out the window. In the turret area, there sat a large, black, grand piano. Levi had only seen a piano once before; it had been at a dinner in Wall Sinna.

He went to it and carefully pressed down on one of the keys on the left side of the piano, expecting a soft, high note. He got a deeper one instead, one that made his chest vibrate a little bit. He jumped away from the piano and moved on to something else: the frames around the room—specifically the five on top of the bookshelf near the piano.

He picked one up. Inside there sat a photograph of two people. It looked similar to the photograph he had seen earlier—the one of Grisha Jaeger and Dina Fritz—but this couple wore wedding clothes and smiles brighter than the couple aforementioned. He set the frame down and moved to the next: this photo was clearer and had actual color. Levi wondered for a moment if it was actually a photograph, though he didn't know whether or not it would even be possible to create a photograph in color. There were four people in the photo: a bright, young boy, an elderly couple, and a young, frizzy-haired girl.

The steps creaked and thumped again. Levi set the photo back on the top of the bookshelf and backed away as if he felt like he was intruding by looking around. He stood still and firm, facing a blank wall now and not daring to move. He heard Vera's bare feet pace as she set something down in the kitchen; she came over and stepped next to him.

"Were you looking at the photos?" she asked kindly.

"No."

"You're allowed to look around."

He turned to her. "You said I'll be staying here for a while. What do you mean?"

"I thought that was obvious. It wouldn't make sense to kick you out." She went and sat on one of the chairs. "You magically appeared in my world by entering a basement and then waking up in mine. If there's a way to get you back home, it must have something to do with my basement. You also don't have any money, any don't know anything about this world."

"You're right. We'll start tomorrow."

"Start what?"

"Trying to get me home, idiot."

With a scolding tone, she said, "Oh, no, we will not. You just hurt your arm. I'm not letting you return to that vicious world until you can hold a soup can at the least."

"You're not in charge of me. My regiment needs me."

"You won't be of any help if you're dead because you couldn't move your arm."

Levi mulled over the idea for a moment. He took a seat on the opposite chair, placing one arm on his knee and resting his chin in his hand. She was right. If he managed to return to the cottage, he'd have to wait out the day perhaps before returning home, and the wait could be its own hazard. Then he'd have to get over Wall Maria with only one half of his omni-dimensional maneuvering gear—which was doable but rigorous and possible painful for his arm. He needed both arms if he wanted to make it home, and it was true that he'd be of no use to the regiment if he were dead.

He gave her a little nod and a sigh.

"So it's settled." Vera stood. "Do you have any allergies?"

Levi's eyebrow curled upward. "No. Why?"

"It's dinnertime. I was going to make food." She laughed. "You're lucky I know how to cook for two."

She offered him a pair of clothes she said belonged to her brother before he moved: a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Levi didn't like how the jeans felt, but the t-shirt was fine. She showed him around the spare bedroom, which was a little dusty in a way that Levi knew would have to be amended. He saw the bathroom across the upstairs hall, Vera's room, which was next to his, and her study, which was across from her room. Vera gave him a book to read: The Hunchback of Notre Dame. After that, she told him to sit wherever he wanted until dinner was done. He chose the kitchen so he could glance up and see her work on occasion. The stove was strange to see, and he enjoyed watching the refrigerator light up whenever she opened it.

The dinner was some dish with noodles and a bunch of vibrantly colored vegetables and an oil sauce. Levi ate a whole plate of the stuff. He rarely ate more than the usual gruel, potatoes, and bread at home, so a genuinely flavorful, filling dish was more than refreshing. Vera offered him seconds, but he refused. He didn't want to look eager around this woman; she made him uncomfortable with how comfortable she was to be around. He couldn't explain it, but he didn't want her to show any more kindness.


	4. In Which the Two Go Shopping

Levi, who was so used to wearing his regular uniform, cravat, boots, and so forth, looked upon the clothes on the racks with a scrunched expression. Each item was strangely designed and looked as if they were all made of materials he knew he wouldn't like. The jeans he had been given three days earlier were growing on him, but he was sure he couldn't just get the same pair of jeans. The people he had seen on the drive to the store all dressed so differently that he was sure they all wore different things every day with no similarity.

Vera nudged him forward. "Pick out some things you like. Don't worry about the price tags."

"What if I hate all of it?" he asked quietly, but Vera only laughed and went toward the closest rack.

"I'm sure you don't want a sweater... It's almost summer." She set down a red sweater in a stack of clearance items. "Do you like those jeans? Maybe we should start with pants."

"I'd like to keep these."

She gestured him to the other end of the men's section, saying, "You don't have to give anything up. We'll give you a few pairs to try on and you can choose the ones you like. You'll want seven pairs plus a pair to sleep in."

Levi looked at the variety of jeans that had been fitted around white mannequins of only the lower half of the body. They all had names which Vera said were the brands. She held up a pair that was labeled, "Levi Strauss Co.," and it made her laugh and point out his name. He did not find this funny.

"You know, I wear the same things every day too," she pointed out, looking down at her skirt. This one was a yellow color, and her shirt was white. "If you like one brand, buy several of the same pairs. You can wear different shirt colors if you're really worried about having a variety."

Levi picked up one pair of dark blue jeans, held them to his body to see if they were the right length, and folded them. He placed them in the shopping cart. "These are fine."

"Do you want tighter-legged ones? They look more like the pants you were wearing when I found you—the uniform."

"I don't care."

He ended up choosing seven of the same pair, as Vera said he could (and should), as well as seven of the same button-up shirts. He accepted the tank top Vera offered him, chose the underwear and socks Vera recommended, selected the belts she thought might fit, and took the cardigan she said he might want in case it got a little chilly. The only thing he really chose without help was the pair of shoes—but Vera also insisted that he buy a pair of tennis shoes that he could get dirty, but they were plain black, without color or decoration. He wasn't a picky or difficult man when it came to shopping for clothes, and Vera appreciated that much from him. She also snuck a bathing suit and a hat into the cart. They were unnecessary, perhaps, but if he wanted to swim or go to the lake on her property, he certainly had the option now.

Vera bought for herself a new sunhat and some extra socks, but she didn't make Levi wait around to shop. If she wanted to buy herself new clothing, she could certainly go on her own time once he was back in his world.

They went for lunch after shopping, but Levi didn't order anything. He wasn't sure how clean the food was. He had said, "They seem to be rushing everything. I'm not sure if I trust their cleaning process."

"I'll finish my food, and then we can make you something at my house." She bit into her omelette, swallowed, and drank a bit of her water. "You know, the student I have who loaned me the comic—manga, I think— lives near my home. His name is Maxwell. I have dinner with his family from time to time. We could visit and ask about your world, maybe see if he knows anything about how to get you home."

"I don't think it'd be worth it. I've never traveled dimensions, so I'm sure there wouldn't be anything about that in the book, assuming he's read every volume like you said. Besides, he's got to be just a kid."

"He's seventeen, so I'm sure he could solve any puzzle better than I could. But if you're sure, then we won't go."

"What's a seventeen-year-old doing in school?"

"Learning...?" Vera responded.

He said, "Shouldn't a kid that old be working?"

"I guess that's different too. Kids stay in school until they're eighteen. Those last four years of their education are called high school. Usually, they go to college after that. Do you know what college is for?"

"Ours haven't been in use in a long time. They were devoted to military research after the fall of Wall Maria."

"So no one earns degrees where you're from?"

"Not unless you're rich enough for a private tutor. Then you start working in the research labs."

"I see."

"What do kids learn in school here?"

Vera perked up a bit. "They learn how to read and write, do basic math, science, and history until they get to high school. Once they get to high school, the classes branch off into more specific studies. They learn algebra and calculus, chemistry, biology, world literature and history, as well as economics and government. I teach my students physics."

"How things move? Sounds dumb."

"It's easy concepts, but it's not dumb. We do things like circular motion, free fall, applied forces, gravitational force. It's the basics, but I enjoy teaching it."

Levi asked, "Why do they learn all of that? What does higher education get used for if there's no war?"

"That's tough to answer. My best answer is... that it gives them a taste of all of the subjects they could turn into careers. Like Maxwell; he likes math and business, so he's going to be an accountant. He'll manage other people's money after college." She shrugged. "Not constantly being in a war for survival means that people can branch off and become artisans or specially-trained workers."

Levi nodded slowly as he thought over what she had said. He looked out the window of the diner and saw all the tall buildings staggering over the streets, which were busy with moving vehicles—cars, Vera had called them—of all colors and shapes and sizes. He could even hear the rumbling of the cars, and in his mind he felt nervous, as if the rumble were explosions, but no one seemed to care. People walked on the streets without any care at all, any suspicious eye, any fear. Not one person seemed to share the same concerns: would they make it to tomorrow? or would they have enough money for food tonight?

It was strange. Levi considered trying to let go of his fear and his precaution, but the safety with the world around him made him feel unsafe. He felt so contrary to himself that he wasn't sure how to feel. So he waited for Vera to finish her food, and then the two left for home.


	5. In Which Levi Comes Down From the Window

Vera had opened all of the windows in the old, creaking house because of how warm and summery today felt. The breezes kept the field and cool as the hot, humid air sunk down and married the grass, and open windows kept the house equally as cool. Vera had talked about air conditioning existing to keep homes cool, but her house was a hundred years old and didn't really accommodate air conditioning well.

Levi was fine with it. He didn't say it aloud, but he really preferred the humidity. The air in the Underground where he had been raised had always been so dry that his nose would bleed at least once a week. Humid air felt better in his lungs. Vera expressed that Seattle, the big city outside of which she lived, got so much rain that it was almost impossible to find a day where no puddles existed, so the humidity was a constant.

It was a nice thing to have a bright bedroom. The big window in Levi's room was directly in the sun in the late afternoon, so he could see the bright rays beaming through the open windows and landing all across the opposite wall. He was cleaning today, though it was a slower process without one arm to help him. He wiped down the wooden desks and removed the sheets from the bed. He dusted the lampshades and cleaned off the mirror over the bureau. He tried his hand at vacuuming for the first time after Vera showed him how to use it-how to plug it into the electricity outlet, turn it on, get it to move around. It was a thing of beauty to Levi especially because he could see the canister where the dust went in and accumulated.

Vera lived on a large property which she told Levi was around three square miles. At the front of it, separated from the road by an acre's worth of trees, there was the field where her house was. It was a large field of four or five acres in size, surrounded by trees and upward-sloping hills, and the house sat at one of the higher parts of the field. It was covered in tall grasses and, at the moment, hundreds of pink and blue and yellow and red flowers. The pollen in the air stuck to almost everything, but it was one of those things that Levi didn't mind at heart; he pretended to be annoyed by it, but it had been so long since he'd seen a field of flowers that he couldn't have cared less about the pollen. He looked out of the open window while returning to the room after setting the vacuum in the hall.

He could hear a soft hum rising up from the window. He went toward the window and looked over the sill at the ground below. The back of Vera's house was closed off by a dirty picket fence, but the fence gate was hanging open now. Levi saw Vera then, with a blue skirt and a sunhat to match, bent over a tall plant with a cage around it. She held a cumbersome, wicker basket in her arm and was singing a smooth, gentle song with lyrics Levi couldn't hear from where he stood. It was a slow and gentle song. He watched her sway gingerly as she picked the little cherry tomatoes off of the bush.

"Here," he heard her say, "I'm sure you could use this." She outstretched a hand to a little robin on the fence and let it take a tiny, red tomato from her hand. The bird flew away with a slight tweet.

She turned then as if she felt someone looking at her. Her gaze went up to the window, but Levi ducked away before she could see him. He sat on the floor, beneath the window, with his ears warming up in a way he didn't appreciate. His heart sprang a tiny bit as he thought about her gifting the robin and smiling at him. Levi waited until Vera began to hum again before he got up. Pretending as if he had just come to the window, he called out to her:

"Vera."

She turned up at him and beamed. "Hello, Levi. Isn't it lovely out?"

"Do you know if my bedclothes are dry?"

"I'm sure they are by now. I can get them for you after I finish picking these."

"I can do it."

She shook her head. "Not with your arm. They're heavy."

He looked at her for a moment before turning away from the window. He went downstairs and put on his shoes at the back door. The door snapped shut as he went out, and then he circled the house and went toward the garden where Vera was. She'd gone back humming once again, but she paused again once seeing Levi in front of her. Brushing a curly lock away from her face, she straightened to see him. When he didn't say anything, she reached down into the woven basket and picked up the largest cherry tomato she could see.

"Open your hand."

Levi hesitated, but he did as she said and watched her set the red fruit in his pale palm.

"Eat it, silly," she told him.

He bit into it and felt a sudden burst of sweet, sunny liquid fill his mouth. He chewed it into a pulp and swallowed, and the delicious thing was gone in an instant.

"Do you like it?"

"Yes." He looked down at the plants at their feet. "Did you grow them yourself?"

"I did. I grow all of my fruit. The peaches are my favorite. Have you ever had a peach?"

"No."

"We should go peach picking. There are a bunch of trees downhill from here." She pointed over the fence at a small grove past the hill.

Levi asked, "Is that what you do with all this? What's the point of having this much land?"

"I'm not sure. The property used to be my grandparents, who owned a farm in their home country. They liked having the space, so when they immigrated and got the money, they bought up a huge property. My parents inherited it when they died, but they live across the country and have no use for it; they like their luxury villas and apartments and penthouses. I like the old, breaking home. They gave to me when I moved here."

"Why not sell it?"

"I used to come here when I was a kid. My brother and I explored the area. It's sentimental to me-and, if I sold it, someone would come in and cut the trees down, I'm certain." She knelt down and started grooming the lower half of the plant.

Levi also bent just then and leaned toward the plant. He watched Vera's delicate, thin, soft fingers pluck at the tomatoes. "How do you know when it's ripe?"

She looked at him with a gentleness and took his hand. She placed his fingers over one tomato at three points and said, "Pull gently-like you're picking up a pin."

He pulled, but the tomato didn't come loose. He felt Vera move his hand to another cherry tomato, and so he repeated the pull with the same gentleness. It came off with almost no effort. He held the tomato in his fingers and turned it, watching the sun create a shimmer against the small drops of water across its impermeable surface.

"Tomatoes will let you pick them when they're ready, but all you really have to do is touch them. If you have to pull harder than a slight tug, it's not ready."

Levi held the tomato in his fingers and turned it, watching the sun create a shimmer against the small drops of water across its impermeable surface. He then held it out in front of Vera. She looked at him with a closed-mouth smile, her eyes soft as could be. They were a bright golden-brown, like rich soil, Levi noticed then. She kept her gaze on him while picking the tomato from his hands. She closed her eyes when she bit into it, and her smile grew as she chewed. Levi stared with an unconscious tilt of his head until she opened her eyes again, at which point he straightened and pretended to look back at her-as if he had looked away.

"My grandmother used to tell me that a good tomato tastes like sunshine," she said after swallowing. "You just picked the sunniest tomato I've ever had in my life."


	6. In Which Vera's Friends Pick Her Up

When a knock came at the front door, Levi didn't want to answer it. Vera was upstairs, getting redressed because she said she was going out. Levi went to the door anyway, knowing Vera didn't hear the knock. He tried peering through the stained-glass windows in the double doors, but he couldn't see more than the silhouette of a person on the porch. He unlocked the door and pulled it open, and there stood two people about Vera's same age-two men. Both of them handed Levi estranged gazes, looking him over as he stood, short and awkward, in the doorway.

"Does Vera have a cousin she didn't tell us about?" asked the taller man as he leaned towards the other.

"Who are you?"

"Tom and Alex-Vera's friends. Who are you?"

Vera came running down the stairs then, so Levi didn't say anything. He looked back at Vera as he stepped away from the door. She wore a floral skirt today, and her shirt had long, baggy sleeves. It was a chillier day than usual, explaining the change, but he liked it. He watched her put on a pair of shoes.

"Vera, who's this guy?" asked the taller one, his forehead creasing a bit.

"Oh, Levi?" She looked back at him as he leaned against the stairwell column. "He's a friend from high school. He's been staying with me for the last week. Levi, this is Tom and Alex, the friends I was going to go out with."

"Nice to meet you." Alex, the shorter one, extended his hand. Levi did not take it, nor did he change his deadpan expression. Alex took his hand back and said, "Tough crowd. Vera, do you think he'd wanna come with us?"

Vera looked back at Levi. "Do you want to? We're going to this bar downtown. It's a clean place, I promise."

"No, I'll stay here."

"Okay, if you're sure. My number is on the refrigerator, okay?" Vera picked her keys off of the table by the door. "And remember to take your arm out of that sling for a bit. You can try holding a soup can in the cupboard."

"I will."

Tom, who was a handsome man with a face somewhat like Erwin when he was younger-though he had reddish, wavy hair instead of Erwin's blond color-wrapped his arm around Vera as she went toward the door. The other one, Alex, went for the car without looking back. Levi assumed he was scared of him. As the door closed, Tom looked back at Levi and gave him a little tip of his head: a sort of, "I win," or a "Take that." Levi frowned as the door shut, and he moved to lock it before returning to the living room where he had once been sitting.

Levi hadn't been left alone much since arriving a week earlier in this world. If Vera went somewhere-the tailor, the drugstore, and the bookstore-she brought Levi with her. H e tried his very first cupcake (and hated it), but he'd picked it out from the drugstore along with a shampoo "for men"; at the bookstore, she'd told him to buy whatever book he wanted, and then she ended up buying him another one that he might like. It was more entertaining than not to be around her. Now that Vera wasn't around, Levi wasn't quite sure what to do, and he suddenly didn't want to read anymore.

After a moment, he decided on making some tea. Vera had a pot full of honey by the kitchen sink, so Levi added honey to his tea for the very first time. It made it sweeter, but it also added a sharp spice to the flavor. Had he added too much? He'd never had anything with honey in it, so he had no way of knowing.

While the water for his tea heated, he took his arm out of the sling and held the soup can from the cupboard in front of him. He managed to hold it for a whole minute before his elbow grew too sore to keep up, and so he set the soup can down and decided to leave his arm out of the sling for a while. If he didn't move it, he'd lose his muscle too quickly.

He went to the chair again and forced himself to read, though he was more bored than he ever thought he could be. Levi thought about his squadron back home. Had they made it back behind the walls, safe and sound? Were Armin and Eren alright? Perhaps, in the week Levi had been gone, Armin had gone rogue and began tearing through the three walls and turning them all into pebbles. Humanity surely didn't rely on Levi that heavily, but he still wondered and worried.

Some days, he understood Erwin's choice to be left to die. Erwin had been tired of the hurt he inflicted upon others. Levi understood it too There was a weight resting on Levi's shoulders that he had never really learned to cope with; one he knew Erwin had never learned to cope with either: dead soldiers, the lives of mothers and fathers and children-people, and promises that they would be alright. Levi had never promised anyone that they wouldn't die, but people saw him to be so strong in such a way that they assumed their own false hope.

"That's not my fault," Levi said to himself aloud, but he didn't know how much he felt it. He closed his eyes and pictured Petra's father in his head.

Levi dozed off after a short amount of time, but it was a light sleep where he could still feel the breeze from the open windows on his skin.

_____

At some point that night, Levi awoke to the sound of the door popping open. He saw the car headlights beaming through the window and so he was sure it was Vera. He hadn't intended to wait for her, but it was good to know that she was safe. Part of Levi still feared titans even though there were none in this world to hurt Vera on her way home.

He heard a deep voice as well-Tom's, Levi knew-through the crack in the door. "Hey, Vera, wait."

She stepped into the house and turned now. Levi closed his eyes and pretended he was asleep, not wanting to intrude upon their conversation. Levi heard Tom's heavy boots on the wood.

"What's up? Do you need to crash for the night?"

"No, I'm good..."

"Then what-" she gasped then. Levi was tempted to open his eyes, absolutely sure of what was happening but still wanting to know. But then there was a gasp, and the rustle of a jacket followed. "Tom, no-stop that."

"What? Vera, come on."

Another rustle. "Stop it. We are not a couple. I don't want this."

"It's that guy, right? Levi? You like him, don't you? That's why you won't kiss me."

"So what if I do? Besides, it doesn't matter if I like him or not; I said no. I do not want to date you."

Levi's heart began to beat louder.

"Babe, come on-"

"Let go of me, Tom!"

It was time to intervene. Vera didn't have a chance of getting out of this cleanly anymore. Levi opened his eyes and stood up. With haste, he moved to the foyer and snapped Tom's arm away from Vera's waist. Levi pushed Tom into the door with furious eyes. "Get out of here."

"You're choosing this pipsqueak over me?" he asked past Levi.

Levi turned to Vera, who now stood with her body pressed against the wall in a shrunken stance. "You want him gone?"

"Yes."

"You heard her. Get out. She doesn't want you here."

Tom wore a heavy redness in his eyes as he looked Levi over. He was a forward drunk, but not an aggressive one. Levi could tell. That's why he piped up just then. And Levi must have looked mean enough not to be messed with, because Tom fixed his jacket with a slow roughness and backed out of the open door, onto the porch. He shook his head as he went and then popped into the car. He drove off without another word.

Levi turned to Vera after shutting the door. "What happened?"

"He was buzzed. Tom's had a thing for me since college." She sighed. "But... but he's too much for me. I love him as a friend, just not..."

"Not as a boyfriend."

"Yeah." She looked up at him. "We kind of had a thing back then, mostly when he was in med school. It ended on a nice note, but I don't think he ever got over it."

Levi nodded.

"Wait, why are you awake?"

He didn't say anything.

"Not a good sleeper?" Again, no reply. Vera chuckled. "Me neither. Come on, let's play cards."

She went toward the kitchen, and Levi followed.


	7. In Which Vera Asks a Questions

"Levi?"

"Yes?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"What is it?"

Vera said, "What's it like... being in the military?"

"That's a stupid question." He looked up at her and saw her chopping vegetables with an expression of tender sadness, and so he recoiled from his harshness. "I mean, what about being in the military?"

"Do you ever get the chance to... have fun? Or is that just something that people in the military tell civilians so they feel better about not being at war?"

He thought about it for a minute. Levi wasn't the type to sit around and play games, but he was in a position in the Survey Corps where it was more business than downtime. Most of his time was spent reading forms, signing papers, planning with Erwin. He stopped. He wouldn't get to plan an expedition over tea with Erwin anymore.

"It depends on who you are—what you do," he said. "As a higher-up, I don't get much spare time, but I've never needed it. I don't enjoy fun very much. I sign papers and do research and plan training regimens. Anyone below my ranking is in a different boat. The cadets and lieutenants get to spend a lot of time having fun like playing cards, singing, talking. They train for the day, and when their bodies need rest, they have to take the time to rest, and sometimes that means being with each other."

"So it's not just death and sadness all the time?"

"It's a distraction for most of them. What do you do when your friends just died? You don't think about it because it'll hurt your performance; instead, you try to win at euchre or chess."

She didn't say anything after that. She came over by Levi with a large bowl full of chopped vegetables and excused herself, and Levi watched her scoop the vegetables into the pot next to the noodles. They were having spaghetti with sauce made from the tomatoes Vera had picked earlier yesterday. As she pushed the vegetables into the sauce and stirred, her face still carried a heavy weight. She took the olive oil cruet and poured a small amount into the sauce, and then she poured some into the noodle pot.

"It keeps the noodles from sticking," she explained in a whisper.

Levi took the cruet and set it on the counter, and he then put a hand on Vera's shoulder. "What's wrong with you?"

"What?" She scrunched her eyebrows in offense.

"You're sad."

"Oh, yeah... it's fine."

"It's clearly not, idiot."

She paused for a moment, looking him over weakly, and then she rested her forehead against his shoulder and embraced him. "I've been waiting for a letter from my brother. He's a lieutenant in the army, and... I haven't heard from him in a while. I usually get a letter on the fifth of each month. I'd like to think that the letter is a week late because he's forgotten to write because he's having so much fun."

Levi pushed her away. "You don't have to hug me. Nothing bad has happened. A friend of mine had an older brother a few years ago, and he always forgot to write. I had to remind him all the time. Your brother forgot."

"Did he die? Your friend?"

"No, he's a captain now, like me." That was a lie.

"I see..."

Levi said, "I'm not good at comforting people."

This made Vera laugh. She turned away from him and took up a spoon in one hand and began to stir the spaghetti sauce. Levi went back to stirring the noodles, watching them swirl around in the hot, bubbly water. He echoed the feeling of Vera in his arms through his head, occasionally looking down at her as she stirred. He realized then that they were about the same height, save perhaps the half-inch he had on her, and he resisted the urge to let his mouth curl upwards.

"You don't have to be good at comforting people, Levi," she told him quietly. "You just have to be there."

"Okay."


	8. In Which Vera Hides Something Behind Her Back

Vera pushed the grocery cart around the corner. "I may grow my own vegetables and make my own noodles and bread, but there are things you can't get in the backyard. Therefore, I go to the store once every two weeks or so. You being around. As long as you're here, that might have to change, but I just didn't feel like going last week."

"In my world, people go to the markets every day. Bread doesn't last."

"I'm sure. That's why I have a bread box." She stopped in front of the tea boxes. "You finished the tea last night. Do you want to choose a new box?"

"Aren't they all the same?" They certainly looked all the same to Levi.

"There are small differences from brand to brand."

"I like black tea. Which is black tea?"

Vera reached up and pointed at the top shelf, which was a bit out of her reach and Levi's. He reached his good arm up and went on his tip-toes, but he couldn't get it. He gestured Vera in front of him and, in a count to three, lifted her by the waist. She got the tea box and threw it into the cart before Levi let her drop back onto the floor.

A laugh came from behind them. "You two make a lovely couple. You remind me of me and my husband."

Vera glanced at Levi and let off a giggle. "Oh, thank—"

"We're not a couple," said Levi, and he began to push the cart the opposite way.

They turned the corner and went into the cereal aisle in a strange silence. Levi looked down at the packaged box of black tea packets, then at Vera, who had one hand on the cart's handlebars, distant from his own two hands. She grabbed a box of plain oatmeal off of the shelves and said the other stuff she needed was in the dairy aisle.

"The next time a sweet, old woman asks if we're a couple, you're allowed to lie."

"Lying when unnecessary is bad."

"But if we made her think of her husband, she might have hoped we were a couple. It's necessary because she maybe wanted us to be a couple. Do you see what I mean?"

"I do. I just don't agree."

She scoffed. "I bet you're real popular with the ladies."

"I am until they talk to me."

"That's a surprise," Vera remarked with a smirk.

Levi glared at her. "What does that mean?"

"You're really attractive, but you're not the most sociable. Women usually don't like that."

"You can quit flirting with me. It's not working."

"Shut up," she hissed, smacking his shoulder.

"Do men usually like you?"

"Sometimes—but then they find out I live in the woods. They think it's weird."

"Why?"

She shrugged. "I couldn't tell you. I just know that's the reason I'm single."

"Another reason to move."

"Who says I need a man in my life? I'm almost thirty and I look like this. If I wanted someone, I could get someone." She nudged him before stepping ahead to look at yeast packets. "I have you, anyway."

A soft smile slipped onto Levi's face as he watched her. "Yeah."

She grabbed a box of raisins and set them in the cart. "But are you really not married back home? No wife and kids to visit on your break from work?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"You just said I was undesirable."

"I was joking. You're a little cold, but I feel like you still might have a wife. Being attractive doesn't hurt you, I'm sure. Any reason why not?"

She thinks I'm attractive. Levi thought about his words for a moment. "I've never had time to find someone I really liked. I joined the Survey Corps and was promoted pretty quickly, and no one in my regiment met my personal standards."

"Personal standards? How high are those? What's your dream woman, Levi?" She was laughing when she said it.

"I don't know."

"Big boobs?"

"You're an idiot."

"Just absolutely monstrous—"

"Please shut up."

At the end of their shopping trip, they had accumulated milk, sugar, flour, oatmeal, tea, a bottle of olive oil, some seed for the bird feeder, raisins, bananas, and some potato chips because Vera was insisting that Levi try them out. They stopped at the bakery so that Ver could pick up some cookies called macarons. She told Levi that she always loved them but she was horrible at making them; after a while, she gave up trying to make them and started buying them.

When they arrived back home, she immediately opened the bag of chips and called Levi over. He was unpacking the food and setting it in their spots in the cupboards and refrigerator; he'd memorized where everything was by this time, so it wasn't a difficult job for him unless he had to reach his arms up. His elbow hadn't healed just yet.

He came up toward her as she stood against the counter. "What do you want?"

"Open your mouth."

"Why?"

"Please just do it."

He looked a bit past her, but she shifted so he couldn't see. "What's behind your back?"

"Trust me!"

"No—what is that?" Levi reached both arms past her, effectively pinning her against the counter, and grabbed a hold on the bag.

They both paused and looked at one another, noses almost touching. There was a long moment of simple staring, feeling the orange, setting sun running through the side window of the kitchen, over their bodies. Vera's hair shined a bright red color in this light. The plastic behind Vera rustled as she took one hand away from it and reached up. Her palm rested against Levi's jawline in a way that made him want to press further against it, and so he placed his hand over hers. He hadn't felt such an intimate touch in so long. She had on the lotion that smelled like cinnamon.

"Levi," she whispered.

"Yes?"

"If we do this, and you leave—"

He stopped her. "I know. I don't care right now..."

He pulled his other hand away from hers and rested it on her back and slowly inched her close. Their foreheads touched just then. Vera sucked in a heavy breath and let just the tip of her lips touch Levi's.

"Captain?" a distraught voice yelped.


	9. In Which Someone Else Shows Up

Levi veered around and saw, in the doorway to the kitchen, Eren! He stared at the two with the widest eyes Levi had ever seen him wearing, and so he backed away from Vera. His face scrunched as he took a kitchen knife from the wooden knife block behind Vera and went toward Eren.

"Levi, is that—"

"I don't know."

"Captain, who is that?" Eren gulped. "Where am I? I have to be dead—if you're here."

"Easy, brat. You're fine." Levi stepped around Eren, poking at him and raising his arms to make sure he was really there. "What the fuck? How did you get here?"

"I don't know—I don't know, Sir." He sucked in a heavy breath. "I'm dead. I have to be dead."

"Neither of us are dead. Shut up."

Vera stepped forward. "If I thought you were lying about being from another world before, there's no way I do now."

"Did you think I was lying?" Levi looked back at her, irked.

"Well, no. I said 'if.'"

He clicked his tongue and looked back at Eren. The boy wore a heavy blush on his face as he stared dead ahead—not necessarily at Vera, but she was in his view. His eyes were quite blank. His chest heaved, and he reached one arm up and grasped his stomach.

"Levi, stop prodding at him; he's panicking." Vera went up to Eren and pushed him toward the chair. She knelt down in front of him and touched his hand. "Eren, right? Do you want some water?"

"Can dead people drink water?"

"I'm not sure. Do you know why I'm not sure?" she asked, and he shook his head. "Because I'm not dead. My name is Vera Antonelli, and I am alive. We're both very much alive, okay? Same as Captain Levi. Levi, get him some water."

He did as she asked, and in the meantime Vera continued to console the boy. At this point, he'd almost come to tears, but Vera was sure he was in shock at seeing Levi, a presumed friend as well as comrade, alive and well. They believed him to be dead after he didn't rejoin the regiment after the expedition, she was sure. Levi had gone over the story a few times over with Vera over the past two weeks: he went into an abandoned cottage's basement on an expedition outside of the three walls, fell unconscious, and woke up in Vera's basement. The only reason Levi eventually was sure that he wasn't dead was because she ended up telling him that it made no sense for a dead person to feel and smell and hear or—in his case—be in pain. She told Eren the same thing and reassured him that Levi wasn't dead, and eventually he was calm enough to stand and move to the living room.

It was an hour before he was able to form a coherent sentence that wasn't a question about Levi's status as a living, breathing person. When he asked how Levi got here, Levi told him the story. At some point, there came a bunch of questions about who Vera was and why, of all places, they landed in her house. A hundred questions asked made a hundred questions answered.

"And you say there aren't any titans here? Like Marley?"

"I'm sorry—what is Marley?"

Levi explained, "It's the overseas nation that's been putting the titans on Paradis, the island we're from, causing the longstanding fight against the titans."

Vera nodded at him. "Okay. No, Eren, there's no such thing as titans. No Walls, no nothing."

"None?" He looked at Levi with the most puzzled expression. "How is that... what do you do?"

"I don't know how to answer that."

"It's a difficult thing to answer when it's normal for you—like how he doesn't know what you do because fear is normal for him." Levi sat down beside Vera, arms on his elbows. "We haven't figured out how to get me back, but you might be able to help."

"Do I have to? If there aren't any titans here—"

"Shut up. You have a duty, Eren."

Vera put a hand on Levi's arm. "If he wants to stay for a little while, he can."

"I've been gone for long enough. Mine and Eren's combined absence could be devastating. Who knows what's been happening there without me?"

"Nothing, Captain. Nothing. We got home from the expedition. You were the only one who wasn't with us. There was a service for you. Armin and I were redirected to Squad Hange."

"Oh, dear..."

"The scientist?" Vera asked.

"Yes, them. Armin and Eren have the ability to turn into titans. They're called Titan Shifters. Hange's been doing experiments on Eren since we discovered his status as a Shifter. No doubt, Armin's going through the same thing now too."

"He is. He's getting the worst of it so far," said Eren.

"But you're going to go back once we can figure out how."

"Captain, nothing's been happening! No one's dying, everyone seems calm—it's like the titans exist, but they don't exist..."

"Levi, can I talk to you? Alone?"

Levi stood up and let Vera take his hand, and they went for the kitchen. When they were sure Eren was out of earshot, Vera whipped around to Levi and gave him a heavy sigh. She put her hand to her forehead. Levi placed one hand on her bicep.

"What's wrong with you?"

"You're gone."

"What?"

"I... I went to Maxwell's the other day and borrowed another few volumes... Eren is the main character. You're a major character too..."

"So?"

"If both of you are gone, there's no way the plot is continuing. No one is doing anything. Who knows if the titans are even active?"

"Of course they're..."

"Think about it."

"What does this mean?"

She shook her head. "I don't know... But that's the thing; we don't know how much danger they could be without Eren and you together."

"We have to find a way to get home."

"We do." Vera sighed.

"We should go back to him. He looks a little sick." Levi stepped forward.

Vera grabbed onto his hand just then. "Wait, Levi."

He turned and looked at her with a thin stare. "What's wrong?"

"I... We almost..."

"I know."

"What do we do about it?"

"You know the answer to that. I'll be leaving anyway, right?" He walked off into the living room and took a seat.

Vera lingered with an open mouth. He dismissed it so quickly—like it meant nothing? And maybe it didn't to him, but she felt otherwise. She liked Levi, and she was just starting to accept it. Even if he was going back to his world, why did it matter? He wasn't leaving tomorrow, after all.


	10. In Which Eren is Interrogated

"So how did you end up here, Eren?"

"I don't know."

"I mean, what were you doing before you got here?"

His eyes darted around. "I'm sorry—where did Captain Levi go?"

"He's getting the laundry. Eren?" Vera grabbed his hand. "Eren, look at me. Levi is fine. He's not going anywhere. He's just getting the laundry."

"He was dead—dead for two weeks."

"But he's not now. He's here. Levi's here and very much alive," she said. "I just want you to tell me what you were doing before you got here. If we want to get you home, we need a... a link of some sort. Can you tell me that?"

"I was... I was with Jean and Armin—my friends. We were messing around, and they picked me up and threw me in a closet. I hit my head and passed out. When I woke up, I was in your basement and I heard the Captain's voice."

"You were in a closet?" repeated Vera.

"That doesn't add up."

Vera turned and saw Levi with a basket in his hands. He set the basket down and came over to the center of the living room. He knelt in front of Eren and looked up at him with a scowl.

"I was in a basement outside of the Walls. You were at the base?"

"Yeah, I was."

"Dammit. I don't know what we're supposed to do with that information."

"There's one thing both have in common: the basement. Have you been in my basement since you arrived, Levi?"

"No, I haven't. It's disgusting down there. You should really let me—"

"I'll clean the basement later. Walk downstairs and turn the lights off. See if you end up somewhere else."

"I'll do it," said Eren. He stood up."

Levi did the same. "Sit down, brat."

"If you were outside the Walls when you crossed over, then that's where you'll end up, right? And what if you can't get back?"

"He's right. You're hurt and unarmed still. If he does it, he could end up in the closet again; if he doesn't, then he has his... his gear. The metal boxes."

"Omni-dimensional maneuvering gear. Fine. Go on, Eren."

The three slowly paced over to the basement door. It made a shrill creak as Eren pulled it open, and the darkness let into the house. Eren went and grasped the rail while he could see it and looked back for Levi. He gave Eren a nod. Eren took a few steps down the stairs, grasping the railing with one hand and the trigger on his gear with the other.

"If this works, I'll tell the others where you are, Captain. Close the door."

"Wait a minute."

"What?"

Levi stepped down the stairs despite Vera's sudden protest. He grasped Eren by the front end of his hair and pulled him close as he winced. "This might hurt."

"What?"

Levi knocked the back of Eren's head with a fist and dropped him. His unconscious body fell against the railing to break his fall, and as he began to slide down the stairs, Levi raced up and behind the door. He and Vera closed it together and waited, their hands spread on the doors.

"What was that for?"

"We both passed out before we crossed worlds. Maybe that's part of it." He sighed. "I wish Shitty-Glasses were here. They'd know how to handle all of this."

"Is that what you call Hange? Shitty-Glasses?"

"Yeah."

Vera laughed. "My nickname was Glasses when I was younger. I had these huge frames that I had to wear because my vision was so awful. They took up half my face."

"You don't wear glasses now."

"I used to get made fun of all the time. After high school, I decided I was fed up, so I went and had surgery to correct it. I see perfectly now."

"All I hear is that you have shitty genes."

"Shut up." She laughed. "What do we do now? Do we wait here until he wakes up?"

"That could be hours—and even then, he might not wake up because he'll be in my world. Let's do something other than standing here." Levi stepped away from the door.

"Like what?"

"We could... go to the bathroom and—"

"I hate this already."

"You could show me how to clean the toilets with that blue stuff under the sink."

"I hate you."

"It's not my fault your mind is in the gutter."

"Did you go rummaging through my cabinets?"

"You said to make myself at home."

Vera laughed at his monotony and gestured him along. "Let's go clean some toilets."

_____

Perhaps twenty minutes later, Eren opened his eyes with a heavy groan. He looked around and felt for the stairs, eventually rising up and into Vera's foyer. Despite his friends and his work being in the other world, he was completely relieved. He'd been hoping that the experiment wouldn't work.

Eren heard Vera laughing upstairs and assumed she and Levi were talking, so he slid over to the couch in the living room, propped himself up with a pillow, and took a nap to ease his headache.


	11. In Which Vera Helps Levi Work Out

As Levi huffed, he heard his bedroom door open. He looked up from his position and saw Vera staring down at him in utter confusion. "Where's your shirt?" she asked.

"It's too hot to work with one on." He looked back down at the floor and switched which arm he was doing his push-ups with. "Why? Enjoying the view?"

"You wish. Shouldn't you be resting your arm?"

"I'll become too weak to get over Wall Maria if I let myself lose my strength."

Vera came over to him and crouched in front of his face, making pure eye contact. "Your left arm is the bad one, right?"

"Yep."

As he did push-ups with only his right arm, she came around to his side and sat herself right on his back. Levi questioned her angrily, but she didn't do anything in fearful response. She felt him slow for only a moment before he returned to his regular, forceful pace. He continued doing push-ups without being fazed in the least, only expressing annoyance.

"Switch arms." She pulled out her phone and replied to a text from Alex.

There was a moment where he was uneasy while making the transition. Then, suddenly, Vera heard Levi grunt. He struggled to lower himself under Vera's weight, and his grunt only amplified when he moved to raise them both. She got off of his back and sat in front of him.

"Levi, stop," she requested gently, resting a hand on his arm. She pushed him more when he resisted. "Stop—stop."

He grunted again and lowered himself with his good arm. Vera moved him to sit straight and face her, and he backed up against the bedframe with one hand on his hurt elbow. She took up his elbow in one hand and examined it carefully, seeing how it moved left and right, straightened and bent. He didn't seem hurt at all by it and could hold his own weight, but it must have been the weight applied when she was on his back. She began to massage his arm very gently, feeling for the points on his elbow where Levi flinched.

Her voice was gentle as she spoke: "When I was about seventeen, I used to play soccer—which is a game where you have two goals, and you're trying to score the ball in the other goal and keep the ball out of your goal. I was really good at it. I actually was so close to getting a scholarship to play in college—meaning a college would pay for me to attend if I played on their soccer team. I was up against this team full of girls a year older than me, so they were all bigger than I was—and I was already a runt, if you couldn't tell." She chuckled. "Anyway, one of the girls pushed me while she was trying to get past me. I was defending the goal, and I fell down and used my arm to break the fall. My wrist got hurt. I had to leave and go to the hospital, and they did their checkups and told me I didn't break my arm; I had a bad bruise deep in the skin, so it felt like a bone break."

"Okay..."

"I went back to practice about two weeks later because I was our only good goalie, and I didn't want to let my team down. I thought it was just a bad bruise, and it was, but I just completely underestimated how bad it was. After I went back, I only ended up hurting my wrist more because I kept catching the ball over and over. At the end of the season, I just couldn't do it anymore, and I had to quit soccer. I could have made a career out of it, but I didn't, and it broke my heart." She lifted her wrist and turned it a bit. "My wrist still doesn't move certain ways these days. I put too much stress on it while it was healing. It's also the reason I'm left handed. I had to relearn to write because I couldn't move my wrist as well."

Levi didn't say anything to her. He just watched her slender fingers move around his skin with incredible gentleness, like she thought he might break or something. Part of him wanted to tear his arm away and kick her out and yell, "I'll be fine. Leave me alone," through the door. He didn't really want to let her care for him like this—but he let it happen anyway because it was just so addicting to have her skin on his. Even if it was the simple, most chaste touch, Levi never felt uncomfortable with it—only his feelings about it. Other people had tried to touch Levi—but he never liked how other people's skin felt against his. He liked how Vera's felt.

He looked up at the door and saw Eren peeking through, but the moment they made eye contact, Eren dodged away and went downstairs. In any other circumstance, Levi would have yelled at Eren for peeking in, but he didn't this time. If he had, he knew it would have seemed like something was up between him and Vera

"What did you come up here for?" he asked.

"Well, first, it's my house." She smiled up at him. "But, otherwise, just two things: my friend from the other week is going to come by and look at your arm. He's an orthopedist."

"A what?"

"He's a doctor who specializes in bones. He'll be able to tell you if it's broken or if it's gonna be alright or what, and we won't have to register you in a hospital. That would be hard considering that you don't have any identification or insurance."

"Okay. Is he the one who... Thomas?"

"Yeah, him, so play nice. He said he was drunk and he's trying to make it up to me."

This made Levi grumble, but he conceded. "Second thing?"

"I was wondering if you'd like to go out to the woods with me? I have hiking trails on this land because half of it, if you haven't noticed, is just trees. More than half, actually." She stood. "Besides, there's something I want to show you."

"What is it?"

"It's a secret; you'll know when we get there." She reached out for his hand.

"I don't want to leave Eren alone."

"He's not a child. He'll be fine as long as we tell him we're leaving. I have to change into overalls if we're gonna go. You let him know, alright?"

Levi nodded and reached for his shirt as Vera left the room. He heard her door close and her closet door, which was right up against his wall, open up. He hadn't actually been in Vera's room since he arrived. He wondered what it looked like. He'd never really seen a decorated bedroom, but maybe it wasn't that different from the one he was staying in, which used to be her brother's.

He went downstairs and into the kitchen, where Eren stood with an old book in one hand and a glass of water in the other. He looked up and saluted Levi as if they were still on duty; Levi felt it was unnecessary, but he didn't say anything about it. The boy wore a red face and refused to look Levi in the eye. He returned his bug-eyed gaze to his book and turned the page. With a sigh, Levi came around the other side of the counter and looked at Eren firmly. Eren hesitated but eventually glanced up and saw Levi staring.

"Yes, Captain?"

"You look constipated."

"I'm sorry, Sir."

"Vera and I are going hiking. I don't know when we'll be back; she won't tell me. But the property is only a few square miles, so it shouldn't be too long."

"Captain, are you and Ms. Antonelli together?"

Levi glared up at him. "Why?"

"I-I... I saw you in the..."

"We're not."

Eren took a breath. "Oh, okay. Why not?"

"Are you stupid?"

"It seems like she... Nevermind."

"Yeah, you should shut your mouth."

Vera popped into the kitchen just then with a smile. Levi looked her over and saw that she'd replaced her skirt with a pair of overalls over her white shirt. She finished forming the braid in her hair and swept the loose hairs over her face back. Levi went and kicked his shoes on.

"Ms. Antonelli, how long are you guys gonna be gone?"

She looked up with furrowed eyebrows. "Have I been using my teacher voice?"

"What?"

"I have a voice I use for my students that sometimes slips when I'm talking to people your age. You don't have to call me Ms. Antonelli. It's Dr. Antonelli, anyway, but I'm not your teacher." She chuckled a bit. "And we won't be too long. We'll be back before dark, for sure."

"Okay."

"Open season on whatever's in the fridge if you get hungry; just don't use the stove or the oven. I'll teach you to do that tonight."

Levi chided as they stepped out the back door, "Yeah, don't burn the house down."

The door closed, and Vera shoved Levi with a little laugh. "You can't even use the stove, idiot."

"He doesn't know that."


	12. In Which the Pair Open Up

"This would be a good place for Eren to practice with his 3DMG."

"You said that."

"This is a better spot than the area downhill."

"You're strange," Vera said with a smile. "So I'd like to give context for what I'm about to show you before we actually get there—and I'm also going to tell you that I'm okay with how I grew up and am at the point where I can joke about it, okay?"

"What the hell are you about to show me?"

"You'll know it when you see it. But, anyway, my context."

"Alright."

Vera took a big step over a root as they climbed uphill, toward a thicker grove of trees than they'd seen earlier. She figured then that this was why Levi thought this area might be better for the 3DMG. The sun flickered on and off of her skin as she hiked. She kept looking back at Levi as they traveled—single file because of how slim the trail was at this point—and Levi saw her crack a small smile every time. When they got to the top of the incline they'd been on, Vera let out a sigh.

"We were all raised very religiously in my house. My mother especially was part of a very religious and cultural family—being immigrants and all. She got shoved into marriage with my father pretty young even though she wanted to study to be a lawyer first. She also never wanted kids. She only started trying because my father wanted kids and her mother wanted grandkids. Cultural pressure, familial pressure, you know?"

"Not really."

"That's fair. Anyway, they tried for a long time without success. My mom had two miscarriages in six years, during which she managed to actually become a lawyer. She and my dad were about to give up on children when they had me and Adriano, my brother. At that point, though, my mom had abandoned any hope of being a good mother. She threw all of her duties as a mom onto nannies, and she became emotionally absent. I saw her a few times a week at most."

Now that the path had widened, Levi took two larger steps forward and lined up with Vera. He kept his head straight ahead as she talked, hearing the darkness in her voice gradually growing. The usual Levi move was to feign uninterest, but his ears perked up and he waited for her next word with genuine, silent eagerness.

"My dad cheated when we were pretty young too. I think I was about four. I remember watching them argue in the dining room while I sat in the living room with my dolls. It was Christmas Eve and we were supposed to be at a party. They talked a lot about my father's assistant at his work." She swallowed heavily. "And that summer, Adriano and I got sent out here to stay with my grandparents. We started doing this a lot more, even outside of the summertime, because my dad was living in the pool house and didn't want us to see him and my mother separated like they were."

"You had a pool house?"

"Yeah. My parents were as rich as could be. My mother was an intellectual property lawyer, and my dad did something in the military; I don't remember what." She shrugged. "Either way, we spent a lot of time up here with my grandparents... especially after my father died. I was ten. He had a heart attack after a fight with my mother, and she couldn't take care of us as much anymore. So, in our time here, my brother and I explored a lot, and we eventually decided we wanted a hideout. We never had a treehouse because my mom thought they were dirty and unsophisticated. I wanted one so bad. Everyone I knew got to have one. Did you ever have a treehouse?"

"I grew up underground. We didn't have trees."

"Underground?"

"Long story. Keep going."

"Fair enough. Oh, this is going to time out perfectly. Adriano and I finally got our grandpa to help us out, and we made"—she stopped in her tracks and looked up and to the right—"this."

Levi followed her gaze. Posted between two trees and a few other supports, he saw a large wooden block encompassed in vines and dust. The wood was a worn, chipped, aged dark blue color and had moss patches growing here and there. There was a staircase wrapped around the thicker of the two trees supporting the house. The structure had two wooden windows on the side he was looking from as well as actual shingles for the roof. It looked like some abandoned structure Levi might find rotting outside of the Walls, left behind for a hundred years.

Vera took his hand without warning and pulled him along to go up the stairs. Levi hesitated, seeing the dirt and leaves on the steps and wondering just how disgusting it was inside. He could see spiders on the walls, a scorpion running across the floor, moth eggs, vines, dust, dirt, dead leaves, squirrel droppings—all reasons to hate the woods in general, but he especially didn't want to be inside a room with all of that together.

"Come on," Vera said, stepping forward. "Just be careful. The stairs are st—" She slipped and let out a yelp.

Levi held his arms out for her and caught her smoothly, though she almost hit her head on the railing of the stairs. She wore a red, frightened face as she opened her eyes and looked up at Levi.

"...Steep," she whispered, gulping once.

"Try to stay on your feet, idiot."

Levi found that he wanted to lean down and kiss her just then. He'd gotten so close to it already once, and the desire was even stronger now. He didn't. He resisted, and he pushed her back up onto her feet and let her go up the stairs. Vera didn't say anything else for a minute. At the top of the stairs, she pulled a key on a necklace out from beneath her shirt, unclipped the necklace, and unlocked the door. It made a heavy click and then, when she pushed it open, a loud pop, and it screeched a shrill "welcome home" on its hinges. Vera took a few steps inside before turning and gesturing Levi to follow. Though hesitantly, he did come in and step up beside her.

"There used to be furniture and a bookshelf and an old tea set, but I had to move those things out when my grandparents died."

"How did they die?"

"Old age, both of them."

There were a hundred little trinkets posted around the room, either nailed against the walls or hanging from the five or six beams at the ceiling. He saw an old hammock made of white ropes tied together hanging from two walls in the far corner. There were torn threads all through the hammock, and two of the supporting wires had been chewed through—presumably by something that had gotten through the break in the shingles overhead. He saw a bird's nest resting on top of two of the ceiling's intersecting beams, but no birds seemed present. There was a telescope with its end popped out through a hole in the wall. It was old and rusty, and one of its three legs was so close to breaking down from rust that Levi was tempted to kick it.

He saw a few benches and some plants, old books, things that resembled some strange scene in a fantasy novel: glass jars sitting on the old shelves; a bottle or two hanging by twine threads from the beams, one full of water and the other having some sticks and a dead leaf inside; woven baskets full of twigs in the corner, next to another basket with string and twine and ribbons in case extra were needed. There a ball with writing and squiggly lines all over it which, after asking Vera, Levi learned was called a globe. He'd seen one in Vera's office too, though hers was a lot nicer and had a cleaner base. This one was all dusty.

"This is my hiking checkpoint whenever I go out because it's about halfway between the start and end of my favorite trail trail. It's not the longest, but it's the most worn."

"Why are you showing me this?"

"Because I haven't shown anyone in a long time—but it's one of those things where I'm dying to let it out. It's personal to me, and I'm trusting you with it." She knelt down and started pulling her finger through a patch of dirt on the floor, drawing out a smiley face and some flowers. "I'm thinking about restoring it, but I also feel like I shouldn't."

"Why not? Looks like a dump."

She chuckled. "It is. But if I change everything up, maybe it'll be like I'm erasing my Grandpa's work? I know that sounds silly."

"A little."

"You know, it costs absolutely nothing to shut up," Vera scolded, but she said it with a light smile.

"It costs nothing to irritate you either." He sighed. "But I do get it, by the way. But restoring it so you can be here more might keep your grandpa's work alive longer."

This made Vera perk up a little bit. Levi understands, she thought. She felt like she'd just said the dumbest thing out loud, but Levi didn't really think so. He even had a suggestion for how to act. She watched him prattle around the wooden floor, kicking at the dirt and the leaves, trying to clear a clean spot for himself to stand.

"Did you really live underground?" she asked, immediately recoiling when his thin eyes landed on her. "I mean, you don't have to tell me your experience... just... Do people live underground?"

Levi crouched down in the dirt and sighed. His eyes went to the rotting beams overhead. "Yeah, they do. The Underground is under the central city within Wall Shina, the innermost of the three walls. I don't know much about its history, only that it was built because of overcrowding and a large criminal population."

"Did people ever get to leave?"

"Yeah, but there are strict passage rules. Anyone who gets up usually does it through bribery—which would be characteristic of an entire city full of low-lives. I was scouted by the Survey Corps, but that was also a dirty job anyway."

"Oh, alright." She remarked, "That must be why you're short."

"Excuse me?" His forehead scrunched.

"Being short isn't a bad thing. It makes sense though. You... A lack of sunlight means vitamin-D deficiency, and that stunts growth."

"Then why are you so short, runt?"

"That's long story. Lots of world history," said Vera. "Genetics."

He clicked his tongue. "Genetics... You're right though, for the record. Everyone is short down there. I'm lucky to have had working legs; a lot of my neighbors couldn't walk. Some of them didn't look like they even had legs."

Vera suddenly felt a little afraid to make any eye contact with Levi. This was for no reason other than complete shock that he was opening up about something; maybe what he said wasn't too personal, but it was more personal than he'd gotten with her so far. She did dare to glance at him from the corner of her eye, and she saw a thoughtful, almost heavy tilt to his head as he shifted his eyes across the floor.

"It was really dirty and... cramped too," he said monotonously, his voice moving into a strange daze-like state. His mouth hung open just a tiny bit, like he couldn't really feel his mouth at all. "It smelled like shit all the time. You could step in it if you weren't paying attention, and sometimes we didn't have the money for shoes... And I slept in a corner until I was eleven, and then I slept in a cupboard for another four years. There were cockroaches everywhere."

"...Levi?"

"I once woke up with one on my face. It was crawling on my eyelid."

Vera went over to him and reached a hand out to touch his shoulder. "Levi? Are you alright?"

There was a moment where he didn't say anything. Vera shook him a bit and tilted his chin up so he had to look at her. His eyes came back to life a little bit, and he shook his head suddenly to jostle the memories away. She then regretted asking him about his childhood. It was difficult to imagine before, but she now understood why he didn't talk about himself much. He was traumatized, and he just hadn't come to terms with it.

"Would you like to help me mop when we get home?"

"Okay."

"And we don't have to come back here if you don't want to." Vera stood, reaching out her hand for Levi's, and let him hold onto it as they left the treehouse.


	13. In Which Vera Leans Out of a Window

That next day, Vera, Eren, and Levi decided they would set aside some time for cleaning before Thomas arrived to help out Levi with his arm. Vera, an early riser, and Levi, an insomniac, both came down around six and took an hour to get ready. They had tea (with honey now that Levi had realized how good honey in tea was), some eggs, and toast with preserves from the strawberries Vera had been growing. After Vera read the news from her laptop, which Levi made a point to avoid interacting, as he was somewhat frightened at the technology, they then woke Eren and got to work.

They had done the mopping the night before so that Vera could find something to occupy Levi. This morning, Vera had cleaned out the fridge, washed the tub, got the guck off of the shower-head, and got the bedsheets in the wash. It was a good thing that Levi was around, since he washed his sheets every few days, and Vera knew she needed to do it more often anyway. Levi took to doing the work outside—cleaning out the gutters, getting the dirt off of the base of the house; he was now clipping vines on the side of the house, much to Vera's dismay. She'd kind of liked how they looked, and they weren't hurting anything as long as they weren't crawling up any trees. But Levi said the vines should go, so she had given him the ladder and some clippers and let him go ham.

Eren came out the back door with a white, square towel tied over his head to keep the dirt off. He stepped down onto the pathway of Vera's garden and saw her tending to the cucumbers with a watering can in hand and a basket full of peppers at her feet. She'd decided to take a break from heavy cleaning and clip some food from the garden. He went toward her carefully, keeping his distance, and removed two halves of a broomstick from behind his back.

"Vera, please don't be mad," he said, catching her attention as she set a cucumber in her basket.

She looked at the broom for a moment. "What on earth happened?"

"I don't know. I grabbed it from the basement because Captain Levi wanted me to sweep up the kitchen, and it just snapped."

"Haven't you been cleaning all day?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You don't have to call me 'ma'am', Eren. I promise I don't bite." She stepped toward him and took the broom up in her hands. "Have you eaten?"

"No, ma—I haven't."

"How about we go in, and you have a sandwich, and if Levi tries to give you crap for it, I'll whack him with my broom—twice at the same time." She wielded the broom halves like swords and gently touched Eren's shoulders with the ends.

This made Eren's shoulders loosen. He nodded and gave her a soft smile, curious at how she wasn't all that scared of Levi in the first place. He looked around for Levi, who was supposed to be taking the vines down from the sides of the house, but he didn't see him anywhere. He reached down and picked up the basket of cucumbers and peppers for Vera, and she thanked him and went to open the door for him.

Inside, she set the vegetables in the sink to let them soak in warm water to get all the dirt off. They were large, larger than her yield the year previous, and she wondered if it had something to do with loneliness. She pulled the preserves and peanut butter out of the cupboards, gave Eren some bread, and told him how to make a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, promising him it would be amazing. He didn't doubt her. Then, after deciding to let the vegetables soak for a little longer, she removed some window cleaner from beneath the sink and stuffed a few paper towel rolls in hand, and went to the living room.

She could hear Levi tearing vines from the house through the walls. Her eyes went to the first window, which she cleaned and scrubbed for a moment before opening it. It unlocked with a pop and slid outward, its glass panes pressing against the side of the house now. She peeked her head out the side of the window and looked at Levi, who was about at her height on the ladder she'd let him borrow. He perhaps was only a few inches from the window.

"Hi, stranger."

He looked at her and stopped clipping the vines. "Morning." Then, he returned his attention to the vines.

"It's noon now. Good afternoon," she remarked cheerily, leaning over the window sill, and her eyes began to scan the field of flowers in front of her. "The first summer I came to stay here when I was younger, my Grandma taught me how to pick red peppers. She had me pick all of the peppers after only showing me how to do it once. And, every time I came inside with my basket of peppers, she'd hold them up and gasp and say, 'These are the biggest peppers I've ever seen. Do you know why?'"

Levi's eyebrow rose as he glanced back at Vera. She didn't have her hair in a braid or a bun today, so it was all out and hanging from her head in lovely, frizzy curls that swayed in the wind. She had her lips parted in a sort of smile that made Levi wonder what she was looking at and thinking about. He felt like he could never tell whenever he looked at her.

"I'd ask why, even when I knew the answer. She'd always kiss my cheek and tell me that lonely people grow the smallest peppers; the more love you have, the bigger your peppers will grow. They get so full of love that they look like they're going to burst when you go to pick them."

"I don't think that's how plants work."

She shook her head and looked at him with a grin. "No, it is. You'll never believe the size of the peppers I picked just now. They weren't that large last year."

Then, she reached a hand out and set it against Levi's jaw. In one very swift motion, she pressed a gentle kiss to his cheekbone, just under his eye, and backed away as if it were nothing at all—but everything at the same time. Levi flinched initially, not out of fright but rather shock. When Vera left him, she gave him a little nod and said she had to wash the windows now. She closed the window and walked away.

Levi then set his vine clippers on the top step of the ladder. He leaned against the steps in front of himself and cupped his forehead in his gloved hands, ears turning red. He realized now how far gone he was down this rabbit hole with Vera, and he couldn't stand to wonder what being deeper would be like. Would she kiss him more like that if he were deeper in that rabbit hole? Maybe she'd touch him more. He liked how her skin felt more every time she touched him.

Levi took the clippers in his hands again and went back to the vines, but he was no longer absently lost in the chopping sounds. He kept thinking about Vera.


	14. In Which Thomas Makes a Second Appearance

"It's definitely not broken. That much I'm sure of." Thomas sighed. "I wish I could have looked at it a little earlier or in a more professional setting. Why couldn't we just go to the hospital?"

"You work in the system; you should know that more than any one of us." Vera sighed, leaning up against the counter across the room from Thomas and Levi.

"That much is true. Anyway, it seems like its just a contusion—a bruise on the muscle. It can feel like a break or, in your case, a pulled ligament in the elbow, but this doesn't seem like a serious case. I can see you having full function soon."

Thomas gently rested Levi's arm back on the table and cracked his neck a few times on each side. He's got to be Erwin's size, Levi thought as he looked Thomas up and down, noting his staggering height and heavy build. Levi was built, but he didn't look like it because of his height; Thomas probably wouldn't have had to work out at all and he would still look absolutely ripped. Levi could see him eyeing Vera as she turned around and reached for a cup in the cabinet.

"Do either of you want tea?"

Levi accepted and asked for honey, having been advised not to get up while Thomas set an ice pack over his elbow. But Thomas stood then and went to Vera as she reached up into the cupboard. He subtly resting a hand on her back, he pushed past her and grabbed two mugs for her. The two turned to each other and locked eyes, and Thomas set the cups in her hands and made it an obvious point to brush his hands against hers while he did so. Levi didn't like it. He turned his head away and saw Eren in the doorway from the living room to the kitchen, also watching Thomas and Vera with speculative eyes

Levi hadn't been seeing much of Eren since the boy had arrived a week earlier. He seemed to spend most of his time sitting up in Levi's room—since Levi didn't use the space much—and only opting to go outside when he felt he had to exercise. He went on a jog in the morning and, otherwise, was strangely reclusive. I understand why, but I don't like it, thought Levi as he shifted his eyes away from Eren. Eren was more emotional than Levi; being tossed into a completely unfamiliar world with unfamiliar terms (a lack of titans, a lack of Walls, a lack of pure violence and hurt everywhere) was a jarring experience even to Levi, so he was sure the fear was only amplified in Eren.

Vera came over a moment later and handed Levi in a plain, grey teacup which he had claimed his own. All of Vera's teacups were white and flowery except for the one, and so Levi, at some point, designated that as his own so he wouldn't mess up the pretty ones.

"Hi, Eren," Vera greeted with a strangely parental smile. "Want some tea?"

He looked between Levi and Vera with scrunched eyebrows. "Yes, please."

"Did you dust the dresser and tables upstairs?" Levi asked from behind his mug.

"Yes, Sir."

This made Thomas laugh. "Why so uptight, kid?"

"I'm not."

"Tom, he's fine. Let him be." Vera set a cup down in front of one of the empty seats at the table and scooted the chair out for Eren.

"Levi, remind me how you hurt your arm? I know you said you fell, but... It just looks real nasty."

The other three in the room all gave each other side-eyed glances. They hadn't really thought about any way to get around explaining Levi and Eren's presence in Vera's house or Levi's injury; Levi was apparently an old friend from out of state, but how he hurt his arm wasn't something he thought he'd have to talk about. As for his elbow, he only gave a brief description: 'I fell down the stairs.' Even though it had happened while he was outside, fighting titans, it felt a lot more realistic to say the stairs because, at the end of the day, that was how Levi ended up in this world. They all began to wonder what they would say if Thomas asked who Eren was, or why he called Levi 'Sir.'

But Levi gave his reply almost immediately: "I was upstate picking up Eren. His mom's stairs are steep and old, and the basement got a little flooded. I slipped and landed down on my arm."

"Ouch."

"Yeah."

"You knew each other in high school, right—you and Vera?" Thomas leaned against the counter, one hand on the countertop behind Vera. She did not inch away, Levi noticed.

"Yeah, we did," she said.

"Was Vera just as dorky back then as she is now?"

"I don't think Vera's dorky," Levi replied almost defensively.

Thomas laughed. "Easy, I'm just kidding."

Vera looked up at him and rolled her eyes playfully. "I got rid of the glasses and the braces in sophomore year of college, okay? I wasn't that dorky. And I actually learned how to manage my hair. Remember how frizzy it used to be, Levi?"

"Yeah, I do."

"I have blossomed since," Vera beamed, glancing up at Thomas. "You, on the other hand, have very specifically not blossomed. I mean, it's the hair."

"Woah, what's wrong with my hair?" He reached up and began to fiddle with it.

As they talked, Levi grew more curious to actually know about Vera before he met her. What did she look like like? How did she act? What was she like? Was she really as dorky and shy as Thomas described?

They spent a little more time chatting about Vera now as compared to when she and Thomas met. After tea, they decided it might be time for dinner, at which point Vera invited Thomas to stay. There was a strange awkwardness between the two the Levi was sure had to do with the other night. He assumed Vera had invited Thomas to make some sort of amends—let him know she wasn't angry at him. He didn't know how she couldn't be. He hated Thomas's guts at this point, and they'd only met three times.

_____

After dinner, Vera made a point of walking Thomas out to the porch and see him off in his car. Again, it was an obvious attempt at making amends. Most of her actions toward Thomas that night had been, and Levi had been marking them down in his head out of curiosity. Obviously he wasn't a woman, but if he'd had a friend who tried to kiss him when he said no, he wouldn't keep in any touch whatsoever. He thought his mind would constantly be in defense mode after that. Honestly, he was pretty sure Vera's was too, and that's why he stayed by the window near the porch, out of sight, and just listened. He couldn't hear their conversation much, but he didn't need to; he just wanted to make sure Thomas didn't feel the need to raise his voice.

Eren came out of the bathroom then and stepped into the kitchen, brushing his hands together as if they were still soapy. He looked Levi up and down and reached for the towel hanging over the oven door handle.

"Sir, are Vera and Thomas... Are they together?" he asked.

Levi immediately glanced at the window and saw Vera laugh a bit. "It's not our business."

"All due respect, Sir, but I think it's yours," Eren replied. "I saw her kiss you, and I feel like she likes you, and you like her, but I think that if you don't... If you don't...."

"Don't what? Keep going," he dared.

"I think that if you don't... make a move... I think she'll think you don't like her."

"Remind me why you care?"

"I..." he backed off. "I'm sorry, Sir."

Levi said, "Even if I did, we won't be here forever."

"I don't know. You could always... stay."

"Get out of here, brat."

Levi heard the car start as Eren walked back to the bathroom. He saw Vera waving through the window, shouting something at Thomas that made him wave back from his car. Levi stood and went upstairs to his room. There, he took to the chair by the open window and decided to open up a book Vera had offered him—the second one he'd picked up in his month in this world.


	15. In Which Levi Was Strange During Dinner

The door to Levi's room creaked open slowly, and in slipped a little light from the hallway as well as Vera, shrunken in her figure. She glanced around the room, eventually reaching Levi in the chair with his book in hand and the wind gently brushing through his hair. He looked up at her with firm eyes as she stepped further into the room.

"You seemed off during dinner."

"Did I?" he snarked.

She sat down at the foot of the bed and huffed just a little bit. "Did I do something? Was it Thomas?"

Levi sighed and pressed two fingers to his temple. "Thomas said my arm is gonna be all good soon. I think we need to start figuring out how to get me home."

"'Cause you're humanity's strongest soldier, huh?" she chuckled a bit, choosing to ignore his blatant avoidance of her question. "I did a little bit of reading."

"I don't like that."

"Why not? It seems like an honor to have a nickname like that. I'd like to be humanity's greatest physics teacher."

"Who says I am the strongest? What system do they have to measure it? It's all just an assumption. I don't like unfounded claims like that."

"Maybe it makes them feel better? People see you and feel more confident in the abilities of the Survey Corps. Or the Survey Corps know you're with them and, suddenly, they don't feel so scared anymore," Vera suggested. "But you're right: we have to get you back eventually."

"Eren said getting knocked out didn't help him. He was out for about five minutes and it didn't change anything."

"That could mean a world of things, but... the most likely options are that the basement isn't the key. Or maybe we're using it wrong? I don't know. What were you thinking when you opened the door?"

Monotonously, he said, "Shit. Fuck. Oh, fuck."

"I forget that you were literally running for your life. But do you think Eren was thinking something similar?"

Levi asked, "Wasn't he fucking around with the other squad members?"

"God, you're right. So we have nothing? Do you think there's even a way back?"

"There has to be. You can't go inside a door without being able to go back out—even if you need something like a key, there's always a way out," he said.

"Are we even sure the basement is the door?—portal, whatever you'd call it..."

"Not really."

"Maybe one of us doesn't even exist." She gasped suddenly and began fiddling with her fingers. "What if I'm not real and you're just imagining me, like in some dream?"

"Calm down, dumbass. I didn't dream you up. You're as real as I am."

"Do you have any way of knowing?"

He sighed. "No. But would it matter?"

Vera looked up at him, wringing her hands. She didn't really say anything; for once, Levi could tell what she was thinking—but it wasn't too coherent. He could see the jumbled thoughts practically being scribbled on her face. The conversation had taken a turn that made her wonder if she really was real, but of course she was. Levi knew it.

He couldn't have imagined an entire world full of technology he'd never even thought about: her laptop, the TV, the electricity, cars, the skyscrapers in town. And he knew he couldn't have imagined any woman like Vera. Levi had thought about his "dream partner" only a few times before (usually after Hange suggested that he get married). Not much ever came to mind though; good at cleaning, cooking, doing all the at-home stuff because Levi was usually working. Vera fit into that vague image, but she added something to it that he never really imagined. Maybe it was substance. Levi had never thought about having a wife with interests and stories (simply because he never thought about getting married. He knew she was real because he couldn't have created the idea on his own.

Levi shook his head suddenly, jolting the ideas from his cloudy mind. When did he start putting Vera and "wife" in the same thought? He knew he saw her as more than the random woman whose house he was staying in, but a wife?

"You never answered my question," Vera mentioned suddenly.

"What?"

"Did Thomas or I do something?"

He shook his head.

"Are you sure? I just... I don't want you and Thomas to be on bad terms like that. I want you two to like each other."

"Because you're in love with him?"

Vera jolted. "What? Why do you think that?"

"You look like a couple."

"Didn't I tell you I don't see him like that? We have a history, but a history is just that: History."

Levi shrugged. "Maybe you didn't mean it. People say stuff they don't mean all the time."

"But I do mean it. I do not have feelings for Thomas—none. None at all..."

"You don't have to prove it to me."

"God, you're so dense. It's incredible, really."

"Why am I dense?"

Vera laughed incredulously and stood, going toward the door. "I'm going to bed. Goodnight, Levi."

She slammed the door before Levi could stand and reach for it. He heard her footsteps pace down the hall and into her room, where she then almost slammed the door. Levi sat in his chair, completely in awe at whatever had just taken place. His face scrunched as he stared at the doorknob across the room.


	16. In Which There is Noise and Then Silence

The next morning, it seemed as if whatever had happened between Levi and Vera had completely blown over. Levi came downstairs a little late, having fallen asleep later than usual and, therefore, woken up later; as he entered the kitchen, he saw Vera and Eren talking quietly about the food they were making. He watched from the doorway as Vera handed Eren a bowl and a whisk and made a little stirring gesture. Eren whirled the whisk around the bowl two or three times—and, at that point, Vera gently stopped him and grabbed his wrists and showed him like a mother and her five-year-old.

"You have to be gentler with pancake mix. Waffles can be light and airy; pancakes need to be heavy and a little lumpy."

Eren nodded and began to whisk slowly as Vera backed away from him. She turned and, upon seeing Levi, smiled and gestured him in.

"Good morning, Sir," said Eren, attempting to salute with a nod of his head.

"At ease. You're not on duty."

This surprised Eren, but his shoulders eventually shrugged and loosened, and he continued whisking without keeping eyes on Levi.

Vera took up a spoonful of some other white batter and came over to Levi. "Try this."

"What is that?" He looked down at the bubbly goo on the spoon with one eyebrow quirked upward.

"Just try it. Trust me."

Levi did as she said and tasted a bittersweet, vanilla flavor that quickly turned sour in its aftertaste. It was rich—not really to his taste, but not bad either. Levi was more a fan of sweeter things when he got ahold of them. Chocolates, cakes, cookies—not so many things flavored like whatever he'd just eaten. He returned Vera's inquisitive gaze with equal curiosity.

"What is that?"

"Was it good?"

Bluntly, he returned, "Yes, it was fine. What is it?"

"I wish it weren't just 'fine,'" sighed Vera as she went back to the bowl on the counter. "Eren, you're probably good now. You can spread the batter into a circle in the pan like I showed you yesterday."

"What did I just eat?" Levi asked again.

"Oh, it's cannoli filling. I found my grandmother's recipe in a box in the basement this morning. She used to make the best cannoli—but they're difficult and take a long time to make. And I'm missing almond extract... I'll have to go to the store. Help yourself to some tea on the stove."

Levi carefully went and grabbed his grey mug from the cupboard and poured himself some tea. As he went to take a seat, he watched Vera furiously stirring the heavy filling in a silver bowl with a wooden spoon. She held the bowl close to her like a baby while she stirred, and whenever Levi saw people do that, he always thought it made them the best chef ever. The way he saw it, someone who was brave enough to stir so quickly without a counter to keep the bowl stable must really have trust in their ability to make food. He certainly didn't have that trust in himself, but he was never really a chef.

Levi wondered why Vera had said he was dense. Maybe she just doesn't like that I was right about her liking Thomas, he thought. She didn't seem like she cared anymore; whether or not that was what she was mad about last night, it had now worn off. Levi, on the other hand, didn't like the idea. He imagined Thomas next to her while she stirred—heard the two laughing and joking in his head. It wasn't hard to make Vera laugh, but Levi thought Thomas did it better than he did.

"So I think we should just take a bit of time and look around the basement today," said Vera. "If there is a way to get you both home, it's down there for sure."

"Maybe we can try putting Jaeger in mortal danger. See if that works."

"He's joking, right?"

"Of course he is."

"Am I?"

"Levi," she scolded, then turning to Eren. "He means to say that being in danger may have something to do with crossing worlds. You and Levi both crossed when you were in danger."

"I was shoved into a closet; does that count as danger—like, in the same way as being chased by a titan?" asked Eren.

"Maybe if you're a coward."

Vera gave Levi a sharp scowl. "Maybe it's not being in mortal danger. Perhaps you just have to feel... scared? You both must have been scared with your environment changing so quickly—Levi being almost smashed by a titan, and you being thrown into a closet."

"Again: coward."

"I'm going to pour this pancake batter over your head if you keep that up."

The three settled down for some slightly doughy pancakes after a moment, once Eren managed to slip them off the pan. They ate that along with some scrambled eggs, slightly oversalted on Vera's part, but they were still good. She was better at making pancakes, she told the other two, and then they ate another round of pancakes which Vera had cooked more thoroughly. Then they cleaned the kitchen, did an hour's worth of chores, and then took to the basement.

There, Eren and Levi tried looking around while Vera sat at the top of the stairs, trying to mend a hole in her favorite skirt. It was amusing, watching the two fumble around, trying to see which one they should beat with a broomstick first. The obvious choice was Eren, being weaker than Levi—though Vera couldn't understand why beating someone with a broomstick was the first option at all—but Levi was holding back today. After his second scolding, he loosened up a bit on Eren, and that was most amusing to Vera. She had a silly, little bit of power over him.

"What is the point of the broomstick?"

"Mortal danger!" they both responded through gritted teeth.

Levi raced backwards up the stairs, whacking Eren over the head until the boy began to yell out, "Stop! Stop! Ouch!"

"Levi, watch out," yelled Vera.

"Try thinking about home, brat!" Levi smashed the stick against his head again and, tripping over the top step.

The door slammed shut, and a heavy thud followed. Levi heard several bumps trail down the stairs, but he stopped paying attention to the sounds around him. He stopped listening. As he opened his eyes, knowing he had broken his fall with his forearms and feeling a strain in his arms, he tuned out of the noise. Vera lay underneath him, eyes wide as she stared up at him.

His chest began to pulse. Her face was red. Levi saw her shoulders all tensed up and her jaw clenched (though her lips were just slightly open). Her eyebrows were propped up in a strange, embarrassed sort of way; but while her face seemed fragile, her eyes were a little different. They were focused on Levi's lips—not his eyes. He exhaled softly, running his tongue across the edge of his bottom lip.

Vera tilted her chin up, and Levi began to lower himself toward her, one hand creeping across the floor and to the back of her head. He lifted her head gently, feeling her hot breath against his face. Vera had a clean, gentle smell, like a breeze blowing through the field of flowers outside. The rest of her house smelled old and musty, but Vera smelled beautiful.

"Wait."

Levi jolted, dismayed, and tilted his head. "What is it?"

"I don't hear Eren."


	17. In Which Levi is a Little Jealous

Vera, placing her hands on Levi's chest, gently pushed him so he would get up. She sprang for the door once standing and swung it open with a bang! And she flicked on the lights. Her eyes scanned the stairs, and then she took a step down onto the staircase. Levi watched her from the ground, having propped himself up on his elbows

Levi craned his neck back. "Vera, can we talk—"

"No, Levi, not right now." Her voice was cold, and then it moved to shock as she went further down the stairs. "He's not down here."

Levi jumped for her. "Well, don't go down there yourself. What if you cross over?"

"What do you think made it happen?"

"I don't know."

"God, I wish Eren could tell us what happened. Eren? Eren!"

"He's not here," he asserted.

There was a heavy sigh. Vera came back up just two stairs before stopping. "He's not... here..." she whispered, gripping the railing with whitening knuckles.

"Hey, brat." Levi took a step forward and reached for her hand. "Are you alright?"

Vera didn't say anything. She took another slow glance around the room, ducking her head to see past the rafters. Her grip tightened around Levi's hand, and she let him pull her back up the stairs slowly. The basement door shut slowly.

"I didn't think it would work," she told him.

"Then why try?"

"We have to get you back somehow... I was just surprised."

"Are you going to be alright?"

"Yeah, I am. I'm worried he's not safe, but... I'll be okay." She turned around and put her hands on his shoulders. "Levi, we got him back. You should go now too."

"You don't want me here anymore?"

Her eyebrows curled. "No, I do... I mean, you have to go home."

"I'm going to stay for a little..." Levi looked around the room for a moment, not sure what reason he could come up with for stalling. His 3DMG, half-broken, sat by the kitchen doorway. "I haven't fixed the 3DMG. And my arm is a little sore."

"Levi..."

"What?" He sighed and pushed away from her. "Come on. Eren's gone. We should go to the store. You said you needed something for those weird dessert things, right?"

Vera agreed with a dejected expression, and she held that expression for the entire car-ride into town. Levi tried to ignore it, but it was difficult not checking on her every thirty seconds to see if she was ready to break down over Eren leaving. He tried to keep his eyes on the trees rushing out of view as they sped down the long, straight road. He was amazed at how spread-out everything was in this world. He hadn't thought about it much on his first trips out to the city with Vera, but he was now realizing just how far away everything was. The city was close to the horizon—an easy fifteen miles away, and the drive was long even though they were moving over the speed limit. He could see thin, wire towers with blinking lights in the distance, and any houses he could see were all about a half-mile from one another and had large front lawns dividing them from the road. 'If only we could travel that fast at home,' Levi thought.

They went to a smaller grocery store—a locally-owned business—once in town. Almond extract was apparently a niche item and one which Vera wanted to buy fresh and high-quality, so the small store was better than the supermarket. She told Levi that it was the good almond extract that made the cannoli as phenomenal as it was. Levi and Vera separated so that Vera could search for the extract while Levi got the other few things on the list (as well as anything that appealed to his curiosity; he only ended up buying a new sponge and plain yogurt). He also chose an ice cream flavor because Vera's list said 'ice cream' but did not specify what kind. He hoped she liked peanut butter and caramel. When Levi finished finding the other things on the list, he decided to scale up and down the back of the store so he could scan the aisles for Vera.

He found her on the opposite end of the store from the ice cream section. As he pushed the cart around the corner, he saw Vera standing next to a tall man with a little, black bottle in his hands, holding it by her to show her. She nodded a bit and laughed at something he said. Her head shook, and she then reached up for a larger bottle of the same black color from the top shelf. The man, wearing a green apron like the rest of the employees, touched her shoulder gently and reached up to grab the bottle for her. Levi began to push the cart toward her.

"You must be making a lot of food. Family coming over?"

"No, not at all. I don't really split recipes."

"Strange thing to say. It's the eggs, isn't it?"

They both laughed, and Vera said, "No, but that's a good guess. My grandma used to tell me that halving recipes was bad luck."

"Your grandma was right. I'd love to try whatever it is you're making."

Levi then came up beside Vera and said, "I've got everything. Are you ready?"

"Hm?" She turned to him. "Oh, yes, I am. I've got the extract."

The employee, whose nametag read 'Johnathan,' said, "Sorry, I didn't realize you weren't... single..."

"Yeah, whatever. We're going now," said Levi.

Without any words at all, Vera set the extract in the cart and began to walk with Levi toward the checkout area. The only stop they made during their b-line was so that Levi could grab flour. Vera had mentioned she need flour. Then, at the checkout line, with slightly pursed lips, he also grabbed two chocolate bars and set them on the conveyor belt, which was still somewhat of a marvel to Levi; it wasn't technology he imagined seeing outside of an industrial setting. Everything looked industrial in the city, Levi noticed as he looked out the front windows of the store. Glass and metal and wire everywhere—not many bricks, no buildings made out of rugged stone, no bumpy slab streets. It was all a lot cleaner too (though it definitely wasn't to Levi's standards, but an improvement was an improvement).

As they came out of the store, Vera let out a small laugh. "What on earth was that in there?"

"What? Give me that." He took the two bags she was holding and carried them, plus his two, toward the car.

"The whole, 'Yeah, I'm her boyfriend' thing."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't tell him you weren't. Not denying is agreeing."

"He looked suspicious. What if he wanted to kill you?" After setting the bags in the back of the car, Levi sat down in the front passenger seat and stared at his feet.

"He was helping me find the extract. It's not my fault he thought I was attractive. And I can talk to strangers, you know." She settled into the driver's seat and looked at him. "I'm a grown woman, Levi."

"I know you are." He looked at her with a down-tilted head.

With his thin eyes, he looked at her little smirk as it died down. Levi was painfully aware that Vera was a grown woman. A funny, hot, smart grown woman with the most charming personality he'd ever come across. He thought that any man would have been crazy not to see that. He got why Johnathan had approached her in the first place. He understood it, and he wasn't mad at Johnathan. He didn't know what he was upset about. Levi just wanted to kiss her.

"You were jealous..."

"What? Shut up, idiot."

"You were!"

"I'm not jealous."

"I don't believe you."

"Why would I be jealous? I hate you."

She started the car with an amused sigh. "Telling women you hate them doesn't make them like you any more, Levi. It's a bad romance tactic."

"I'm not—" He closed his mouth, ruffled, and looked out the window. "Maybe I was a little jealous, but so what?"

"There we go!"

"Go what?"

"I just wanted you to admit you were." Vera gave him a little wink and pulled out of the parking space. "Let's go make cannoli."


	18. In Which Vera Plays Some Music

That same evening, while Levi and Vera stood in the kitchen and began making pizza, Vera asked, "I found something in the basement while you were in the bathroom. Would you like to see it?"

Without waiting for a reply, Vera stepped away from the counter and toward the closet door next to the basement stairs. Levi watched her with scrunched eyebrows as she reached up into the top shelf and, with a clang and clatter, removed a large, thick briefcase made of wood. He didn't often see briefcases made of wood. It came with a large folder in her other hands, almost equally as thick as the briefcase but black and made of leather.

"What are you doing?"

Vera set the case down on the kitchen table and removed six or seven large, black circles from the folder. She propped open the case and smiled at Levi, gesturing him to come over to her. The rolling pin he'd been holding made a small thump as he left it for Vera's little contraption.

"It's dusty."

"It's got a fresh coat of memories," she said cheekily.

"Dust."

"Memories." She pointed to the circles, all of which had little words written on circular bands in the center. "These are records. Choose one."

"What do they do?"

"They play music."

"What kind of music?"

She picked up one and smiled at it, like it was her newborn baby or something. "Old music, specifically, but lots of kinds. This one is my favorite."

"Then play that one. What's it called?"

"'Isn't it Romantic?' by Mel Tormé—and a few others, but the first on this one is my favorite."

Levi watched her stick the record onto the circular platform and press it down until it clicked. She turned other contraption and then, careful of its spin, set a pointy lever down on the outer edge of the record. There was a scratchy noise. The record bumped two or three times, coughing up the dust, before a rough sound began to play. And then the song softened with a magnificent sort of violin melody. Levi watched Vera as she closed her eyes and, in the light of the sunset pouring through the kitchen windows, shone a brilliantly bright, toothy smile beneath her red lipstick.

"My dad and I used to watch a movie called Sabrina when I was younger. They played this song a few times it, and we would always get up and dance to it."

It was a slow, calming, and aptly-named tune. It reeked of romance. But Levi enjoyed Vera enjoying it. He imagined her dancing with her dad; she probably wore huge glasses and posh clothes, and her dad probably wore a fancy suit and had black, slicked-back hair and a smile just like Vera's: wide and toothy and shining. He turned to her and held out his hand, and when she looked at him with a softer smile, he nudged his hand closer.

"What?" she asked, still swaying.

"Dance."

"You're softer than you'd like to admit, Levi." She came toward him, rested one hand on his shoulder, and took his hand in her other one.

"Only because you mentioned your dad. Pitiful."

She laughed, resting her cheek against his. "I'm sure that's it."

"It is."

"I believe you. I really do," she whispered, closing her eyes.

As they gently swayed in the center of the kitchen, Levi felt Vera's body melt into his. The sappy song about falling in love rang through Levi's ears, and Vera's clean smell entered his nose. He took a heavy but slow breath in to really capture the smell. He found himself tied up in the feeling of having her so close that, as vulnerable as he knew he was, he felt safe. Levi wasn't a good dancer, but she didn't seem to care that he was stepping on her toes. He rubbed his thumb across the fabric on the back of Vera's shirt, feeling her warm body beneath it, and pulled her just a little closer so that their torsos pressed together. At first, he wondered if Eren would walk in and interrupt the soft moment—but then he realized Eren wasn't there at all.

With slow care that he might shatter Vera, Levi spun the two toward the counter by the pizza dough they'd been kneading. Vera's back pressed against the counter as it had when Eren first arrived, but no interruption came.

Vera's hand went from Levi's shoulder to his jaw. She whispered in his ear, "Eren's not here."

She'd been thinking the same thing as he had.

"Yeah, he's not..."

Vera was the one who pulled her cheek away from Levi's. She moved her lips toward his, and Levi honestly expected a blast—fireworks, explosions in his chests. Hange had always described kissing someone they liked like that. Levi had been kissed before, but Hange had told him it wouldn't feel the same with anyone besides that one person you love. For Levi, no explosions or fireworks came. It was just too natural for him to kiss Vera that the excitement was replaced with a certain level of comfort. And, underwhelming as that may sound, it was a surprise to Levi because he'd never been comfortable with a woman he was kissing. Vera astounded him by creating safety and affection instead of cold vulnerability, which he had only felt with other women. Levi's hand reached behind Vera's neck and gingerly filed through her curls, and he pressed himself even closer against her soft body.

On the other hand, Vera had been waiting for forever for this; she did feel a slight firework, a pounding in her chest, an explosion. Though he wasn't a passionate person, Levi had been creating a longstanding tension in Vera that had, at their first kiss, snapped into a hundred bits. She was the driving force now; she kissed him harder, pulled him closer, moved her hands around him. His lips tasted bitter like the olive oil they had just been kneading with, and his body was hot and firm. He had large, strong hands that swept her up and teased her just by resting at the hem of her skirt. There was a tightness in Vera's chest as she felt Levi's knee press against the cabinet between her legs.

They pulled apart slightly after the song came to an end, chests tight and heaving. Vera didn't want to, but she had to take a breather and slow down just a bit. Levi kept close to her, not sure if she would want to keep going or stop. Maybe she didn't enjoy it, he thought, though he subconsciously had felt her eagerness for his taste.

"I have been waiting for that," Vera whispered, sighing, as she pressed her temple against Levi's sharp jaw. "Did you enjoy it?"

"I'm still here, aren't I?" he deadpanned.

"You could be humoring me."

"I'm not."

"Then we should do that more often."

"I agree." Levi ran his hands up her smooth back, heart racing. He kept his eyes on the orange glow slowly slipping beneath the horizon outside the window. "Let's stay like this for a minute."

And they did. They stayed against the counter for a long time—only parting when the timer on the oven beeped, and their cannoli shells were done.


	19. In Which Levi Sits in the Garage

Levi spent the next few days shirtless and sweating in the little garage slightly downhill from the house, a red toolbox at his side, working on the 3DMG gear. It was August now—humid as could be and probably a hundred degrees out. At one point, Levi could feel himself dripping with sweat. He was on the cement with the dented hunk of metal between his bent legs and one of Vera's square sleeping scarves tied around his forehead. He could faintly smell its clean scent through the wafting smell of his sweat and the humid air.

Vera came with a plate of fruit every two hours. Levi liked her being there, but he didn't want to keep her; just the other day, she said she had to start forming her curriculum for the next semester at school. That being said, he tried not to talk too much so that she might go and do her work, even if he wanted her to stay. In the middle of the afternoon one day, as Levi was taking apart the head of the 3DMG, Vera came in with not just a blue plate of fruit—watermelon cubes, cucumber slices, some homegrown blueberries and raspberries, and peach slices from the trees in the grove downhill—but also a small bucket in her other hand.

"It looks like a mean day today," she commented quietly.

"What does that mean?"

"The clouds look angry. Like they're going to stir up a storm."

"Clouds don't get angry; they just get dark."

"That's boring. I'm saying we might be in for a mean storm."

She set the fruit down on one side of Levi as he worked, and she came around to the other side with the bucket. It had a rag in it, which she then lifted and wrang out a few times over.

Levi looked up at her for the first time since she first started visiting. "What are you doing?"

"You looked hot."

"I usually do."

Seeing his lips curl up, she whacked his shoulder. "Not like that, idiot. It's almost ninety degrees, and this garage has no air conditioning." Vera took the rag to his shoulder and began to dab it very gently across his skin, letting it soak up his sweat.

Feeling the cold water on his back, Levi sighed and dropped his head backward, staring up at the dusty ceiling. His neck cracked a few times, and he was suddenly aware of how hot and sore he had been all this time. He'd been working nonstop since morning—almost eight hours. His back was killing him from being hunched over, and he'd been craning his neck down the whole time. Levi knew he was bad at keeping up with his body, but this was a new extent.

"You are hot though, for the record. Really, really, strikingly hot." Vera looked over at him with a grin, taking the rag to his forehead. "Are you growing a beard?"

Levi reached a hand up to his chin. "Huh? Am I?"

"You are. You didn't notice?"

"Not really."

"Probably because you've basically been sleeping in here."

"I definitely have not." He looked over at her lips.

"Exaggeration, Levi. Don't forget to shave."

He gave her a long, gentle kiss before pulling away and taking the wrench back up in his hand. "I wish Hange were here."

"Careful what you wish for. They might just cross over and pop out of my basement."

"As much of a nightmare as that would be, they would be useful. They'd definitely know how the hell to repair the fan without losing any of the function of the cable shaft. See how the fan is dented here?" Levi pointed while Vera continued to wipe down his shoulders, only pausing so she could glance at the mechanism.

"Kind of... I can't say I know what I'm looking at. Is the cable shaft the line tangent to... what I think is the fan?"

"I don't know what tangent means. But, yes, this is the fan. It keeps the systems cool and provides an extra boost when projecting the user through the air. The cable shaft, which wraps around the fan, straightens the cables while they're being shot out."

"They apply a tension force that lets the person using them change direction, don't they?" She leaned over Levi's shoulder and touched the cable shaft with one finger. "It's like what I teach my students."

"Yeah, that's right. But the fan has been bent on its side, so it's not running at all. I can't straighten it without closing up part of the cable shaft, meaning I won't be able to shoot straight—and I'll need to if I want to get over the Wall."

"I'm sorry. I don't think I have anything that would work—besides maybe some rods in the basement. You're allowed to rummage though if you need to."

"That feels invasive," he told her.

"Oh, come on. It's basically your house too now."

"You think?" Levi turned and looked at her as she leaned upon his shoulder.

Vera quirked one eyebrow up. "Do you not think so?"

"I haven't thought about it."

"Well, it can be kind of your house too—if you want. Like... our house...?"

Levi leaned in and kissed her again—gently at first, but then a little more roughly. It was the heat and the sweat. It all made him a little more aware of his own body as well as Vera's. She'd walked in with her shirt loose and her hair matted against her forehead, and he liked the sight of her in the heat. She kissed back harder until Levi was turning away from his 3DMG and laying Vera down on her back. One hand rested under her head to pad it from the cement, and the other reached down to her shirt, untucked it from her skirt, and slipped up her cold, sweaty skin.

"Wait, wait, wait," Vera whispered.

Levi immediately pulled his hands away and craned his head back. "What's wrong?"

"There is no way we're having sex on my garage floor." She let out an easy chuckle. "Too many memories with my grandpa here. Bedroom or nothing."

"Maybe we should wait anyway. It's only been three days."

"And the anticipation would make it better, wouldn't it?" She bit her lip.

Levi got off of her and cracked his neck once, seating himself back where he was in front of the 3DMG. He went through the scenario in his head really quickly—taking Vera's shirt off, kissing her neck, kissing lower, lower... feeling her body under his... He agreed and gave her a nod, trying to hide what he'd been thinking about but failing miserably. It made her smirk. As he looked back at Vera, he held out a hand to pull her off of the ground.

"You said you might, uh... have something in the basement for this?" he asked awkwardly, ears red.

"Yeah, I should. I can go look if you want."

"No—No, I can. I have to get some water anyway. You can stay here. Careful with the gear; it's sharp."

Wiping the grease off of his hands with a rag, Levi strutted out of the garage and up the hill, toward the house. He came in through the back door and grabbed himself a glass of water. After taking a moment to drink it slowly (so he wouldn't get sick), he went for the basement. As he stepped out of the kitchen, the phone rang. Levi poked his head into the living room. Vera had familiarized him with a phone and how to work it—and he'd answered it a few times before. Usually, people who called the landline were 'telemarketers,' though Levi didn't really know what they did—only that they annoyed Vera enough to make her slam the phone down. He reached for the phone on the end table and picked up the receiver.

When the phone call ended, Levi decided to skip going to the basement. He went straight for the garage again, not in any urgent rush, but definitely not moving without haste.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't tell if I'm in love with Vera or Levi more... Like I realize she's my character (and I kind of kin Levi ahem) but... I kinda wanna marry her... Anyone else? Maybe I accidentally projected lol because she's a lot like my girlfriend personality-wise.


	20. In Which Vera Discusses her Past

"What did she say?"

"She asked why a man was answering your phone... did you get married without telling her... where you were, how long you were going to be gone."

"And what did you say?"

"I didn't know what to say." Levi shrugged as he leaned against the doorway. "I said you weren't married, that I was a friend, that you were down at the peach grove, and that you'd be gone for a few more hours."

"She didn't try to snoop anymore than that?"

"No, she didn't. She sounded upset. Why are you avoiding her?"

"If you knew my mother, you'd understand." Vera stood and began to pace. "I haven't spoken to her in maybe six years or so. What the hell could she possibly want?"

"Why haven't you spoken to her?"

"Didn't I tell you?"

"No," Levi replied.

Vera sighed and fell back onto the cement. The room got quiet all of the sudden—like the crickets that had been chirping and the flies that had been buzzing had all realized that now wasn't the time anymore. Levi waited too. What on earth could have been so bad that caused Vera and her mom not to speak in so long? He couldn't think of anything, but Levi didn't have a lot of experience with mothers and motherly drama. His mom had never gotten angry at him, though he'd been too young to really screw up when she was alive.

Vera sat back up, wearing a heavy, blatantly fake smile. "I'm going to tell you something about myself, and you might not like me for it. Some people don't... agree... and I'm warning you that I understand if you don't like me for it—but I don't need your criticism or hate."

"What the fuck did you do?" Levi sat down on the stool by the workbench. He heard a bit of thunder crack in the distance.

She sighed. "I don't know how it was for you, but when I first started dating in college, my mom's first thought was marriage a-and... babies. I dated this one boy—his name was Luca. My mom liked him because we shared the same culture, and he was religious, and he had nice hair. Really nice hair... She met him through our church and introduced us just as I was starting my second year of college."

"Is your mom angry that you didn't marry the church boy?"

"No—well, kind of. I told her I didn't want kids. I never really have. I mean, I thought I did when I was younger because every girl feels like she needs to have kids in order to meet some weird societal standard, mark off a box on the 'checklist of womanhood,' that stuff... That's the first part on my list of things where I'll understand if they make you not like me. Like, if you want kids—"

"It doesn't change anything for me. Keep going."

A relieved expression momentarily slipped onto her face, but she did as he said and went on with her story: "She was so angry that I didn't want kids that she ended up letting it out to Mrs. Toscini, Luca's mom—as well as the rest of the church. My mom is really religious. Conservative and religious... and conservative, religious people like her don't have a concept of boundaries. Long story short, Luca wanted kids... a lot. He wanted five, I think, maybe six. I didn't want kids, but I especially didn't want to end up having them and become like how my mother was with me and Adriano. We didn't last much longer than that, Luca and I. We only dated for a year, and then I took some time to focus on school. In my last year of college, I met Tom."

"The jerk who tried to kiss you?"

"You mean the one who also helped your arm," she reminded scornfully.

"Fuck off."

"We danced around the idea of dating for a little bit—an entire year, actually. We didn't really do anything until the night he passed first semester test in med-school. We got a little drunk, and we had sex. A lot of sex." She sighed loudly, craning her neck up. "And we started having sex more often. Like... friends with benefits."

"I don't want to hear this."

"Shut up."

"I'd like to punch the shit out of him, honestly."

She rolled her eyes. "Seriously. Shut up."

"Fine. Keep going."

"I got pregnant."

Levi's breath immediately hitched. He looked over Vera with thin, heavy eyes. He couldn't see it. On the outside, she looked like the type of woman who definitely would be pregnant, maybe even with a third or fourth child. But Levi knew her more than from the outside, and he couldn't see her pregnant. Not pregnant and happy, at least. He could imagine her panicking on the bathroom floor, thinking up all of the ways that it could screw up her life... It was an image he didn't want in his mind. He didn't like to think about her being so vulnerable and afraid.

"I thought you'd make that face." Her voice grew slow and somber as she began to fiddle with her fingers. "Tom—thank God for him—told me he'd stay if I wanted to keep it and be there for me if I didn't. I'd just started working, and Tom was in med-school. We weren't ready for kids, and we didn't want to get married. We were young, and I didn't even want children anyway. I didn't want to be my mother and turn into some hateful, neglecting parent. It made sense not to keep it."

"You put it up for adoption."

"No, I... I terminated it."

He didn't say anything.

And... I told my mom because that's what you do when you're sad and in trouble: you call your mom and she tells you everything is going to be okay. That's what you expect, at least... Mine called me a lot of names, said a lot of stuff about Hell and God. And she flew out here with our priest, Father Luigi, to have a talk about God, extra-marital sex, and abortion a few weeks after I told her." She let out a dry laugh. "Have you ever had your mom call you a murderer? or a whore?"

Again, no reply, even if Vera was waiting for one.

"She stopped talking to me after that. I never liked living with her when I was younger, but I didn't hate her. I mean, I never wanted to cut my mom off. We used to have weekly calls where I would tell her about Luca or Tom, school, work, graduation, small stuff too. But after that visit, she didn't call or text or send mail. I haven't heard from her since."

Vera stood up then. It had begun to rain at this point. She looked out of the open garage door and sighed so heavily that Levi wondered if she might start crying. He hadn't seen her cry yet—and he didn't know how to handle crying women. It popped up in his mind, what Vera had said about comforting people. Someone doesn't have to say anything to comfort someone; they just have to be there. Levi just had to be there. And, honestly, that was all he wanted: he wanted to comfort her, to be there, to hold her. Levi left the stool to stand beside Vera.

"Like I said: I'll understand if you think I'm a horrible person for, I don't know, getting an abortion, cutting my mom off. I get it."

"You did what you had to do, and it's your life, not mine. I've done a lot that might make you think I'm horrible too. Even if I thought it was a horrible thing, I'd have no room to judge."

"Sometimes I feel horrible for it." She turned slightly to rest her head on his shoulder. "I don't know why she would call after all this time. I don't get it."

"Maybe you should call her back tonight. Maybe you should ask her." He wrapped his arm around her and looked out as the rain began to come down harder.

"No. I'm not calling her back. And don't try to change my mind."

"I wasn't planning on it. I'm just here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure if I needed to add on a trigger warning for abortion... I erred on the side of not doing so to avoid spoiling the chapter, but you guys think I should add one, I will—no hesitation. That being said, if you guys think any of my chapters need trigger warnings (!!!including intrusive thoughts!!!), let me know.  
> I will be deleting political comments on this chapter if necessary.


	21. In Which Levi Has a Nightmare

Levi had a nightmare. When he woke up from it, it was with a jump and a loud gasp for breath. It was one of those dreams—the kind where it took him a moment to realize that he was finally awake. He was in Vera's room. The night before, he had fallen asleep on the living room chair with a book in hand; he hadn't slept very much recently, so he didn't mean to fall asleep in such a random place, but it happened, and Vera had woken him up and told him to come upstairs with her. He hadn't slept in her room yet. He honestly wasn't sure if he had even been in her room since arriving. He had to take a second to realize where he was.

It had been one of Levi's least favorite dreams. His nightmares were usually intense, but these were the kind where he couldn't shake them for a while. They scared him. He was scared of getting the people around him hurt.

This time, it had been Vera. They had been walking on Wall Maria, hand in hand, with Erwin in front of them. He had both arms... Levi remembered him having both arms behind his back. Vera held a baby to her chest with one hand, and her hair was long—down to her feet. Erwin said something over his shoulder, and Levi looked down. He had no hands anymore. When he turned around, he saw Eren's titan running toward them. Eren's titan swiped Levi up in its hand. Erwin turned around and bound Vera in ropes and had the other soldiers take the baby. They threw the baby inside of Wall Maria; Vera began screaming for Levi and the baby. Levi couldn't shake the sound of her crying out. Then Erwin threw Vera outside of the Wall, where a titan swallowed her whole before she could even hit the ground.

Levi had managed to shake himself awake, but Vera wasn't next to him. Even though he didn't remember sleeping beside her, he felt like she should have been there. He sprang up from the covers, shoulders shaking, and quietly called out for her.

"Levi?" he heard her reply. "You were stirring. Are you alright?"

She popped out of the master bathroom with a robe, wringing her hair with a towel. Her face, red from shower steam, was calm but concerned. Levi had to take a moment and really see her—make sure she was there. She rubbed her face as if his staring made her think she had a smudge. Levi sighed. She was still there.

He shut his eyes and flopped back down on the bed. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Well, you look like you've seen a ghost." Vera came over to him, sat on the bed, and ran a hand through his hair. "You're sweating. What happened? Do you think you're sick?"

"What is this?"

"What is what?"

"Whatever we're doing—whatever we've been doing since that night when we kissed. Are we a couple? Are we just roommates? We've been kissing and cuddling and talking about sex, and I want to know if this something that doesn't really mean anything because I'm going back to my world and you're going to stay here and, at some point—"

She grabbed his jaw with both hands and shook him just a bit."Levi, Levi! Slow down. Slow... down. You have to speak slowly. What are you asking?"

He took a deep breath, looking into her beautiful, brown eyes. "What... What am I to you?"

"What am I to you?" she returned, hauntingly calm, as if she already knew the answer. "I am what you want me to be."

"I... I'm bad at putting things into words. I've never done this before."

"You don't have to know now, Levi."

"I do."

"You don't. Everything is fine. You don't have to know anything." She brushed her thumbs over his face. "We can just... be. We don't have to put a name on what we're doing."

"But I want to."

"Then we can try... boyfriend. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Dating."

"Then we have to go on a date. Immediately," he deadpanned, looking up at the ceiling. "That's what people do when they're dating. Hange told me so. They have to go on dates."

Vera laughed a bit and kissed his cheek. "A date sounds fun. But not right now, okay? I have to go up to the school, and then we're having Francesca and her kids over for dinner."

"Francesca?"

"My brother, Adriano—his wife. Their kids might stay the night too, by the way. They like running around on the estate." She stood up and went to the closet. "I could use some help moving stuff at work, if you want to come with me. My administrator just moved my classroom so I'm closer to the greenhouse."

"Why did you move classrooms?"

"We had a teacher die earlier this year—around January. She was in charge of the greenhouse club. I'm hosting it now, and I need to be closer to it. Wait, I was steaming my skirt the bathroom." She stepped back into the bathroom.

Levi never thought of himself as someone who was concerned with words like boyfriend or girlfriend. But his dream made him think about how easily everything meaningful could slip away from him. He didn't want to let Vera slip out of his grip before he could call her his.

When Vera came back out into the bedroom, now fully dressed in a white quarter-length-sleeve shirt and an olive skirt, she went back to the bed and sat down near Levi again.

"Your nightmare... it was about me, wasn't it?"

"How did you know I even had one?"

"It was the way you looked at me. Did I do something?"

"No. No, you didn't do anything."

"You can talk to me, Levi. That's what a girlfriend is for." A small, almost sad smile creeped onto her face.

"I know." He sat up and buried his face in the crook of her neck. "I'm going to have to go home soon. I know I will. We're sitting under this guise where we're acting as if I ultimately don't belong here."

Vera ran her hands through Levi's hair. "I know we are. But we can figure something out. Maybe you can find a way to cross worlds regularly. Or... I could come with you."

"No." He shot up and grasped her face with both hands. "No, you will not do that."

"Why not?"

"It's too dangerous."

"Levi, I have a doctorate in engineering physics, for god's sakes. I wouldn't have to be a soldier on the front lines; I could... build things, make things safer for everyone else."

"You don't know how it is there. I... I can't take you there unless I can keep you safe all the time. I'm saying no."

This made Vera a little angry. "Then you can be the one to figure out what the hell we're going to do—since I can't protect myself, apparently."

"You can't. I know you think you can, but it's worse than you think. You don't understand what it's like. You don't know, Vera—you don't."

"Then tell me! Tell me why you're so scared! Talk to me, please!"

'This relationship is going great,' Levi thought. He exhaled, watching Vera's chest heave with suppressed fury. He heard her screaming in his head, the residual damage of his nightmare fraying in his mind. If Vera came to his world with him, she could get hurt even if she were in his sight at all times. Nothing guaranteed that she'd be safe.

"I..."

Vera settled suddenly. "What is it?"

"I've seen so many people die," he whispered. "You never forget their faces, you know? They're burned in my head all the time—I see them when I sleep. I see Erwin, my best friend, and my friends from the Underground who came up with me. I see my squad's bodies hanging from trees and their blood in the dirt. You don't forget that."

Vera had to inch back a little bit. Her heart grew sore; Adriano came to mind. She thought of him lying in the desert somewhere, probably drenched in his own blood. She thought of Adriano's best friend, Jackson, who'd been hanged in the doorway of a mud church. She knew Adriano hadn't forgotten how it felt to pull him down from the doorway and release him from the shoelace noose.

"And my mother... I sat in a room looking at her dead body for weeks. It was dark and dirty, and it smelled. I could smell her dead body. I still smell it sometimes. I... She wasn't even killed by titans." Levi shook his head. "You don't know how easy it is for everything to slip away from you. You've dealt with horrible things too; I know that—but you don't know how easily things get lost over there." He shuddered. "And my dream... I was holding onto you, and you still slipped away. You are safer here than you would be at my side every waking moment over there. I want you to stay safe."

Vera did. She gave him a little nod, a way of agreeing. She wouldn't go to Levi's world. With a heavy sigh, Vera moved forward and fell into Levi's arms. He wrapped her up and held her as close as he could.

"How did your mother die?"

He waited for a long time before answering: "She got sick. I don't know what it was. I think it was something a client passed onto her; she was a prostitute. I was maybe seven? I don't know. I just know I felt..."

"Helpless. I know the feeling."

"You do?" He looked down at her, avoiding eye contact.

"Remember how I told you my dad had a heart attack?"

"Yeah."

"I was there when it happened. He came up to my room after he fought with my mom, and Adriano and I were watching that movie I told you about—the one with that song in it."

"'Isn't it Romantic?'; Sabrina."

"Yeah, that one." She sighed. "I saw him in the doorway when he was coming in. He stared me down while clutching his heart. When he fell, Adriano went downstairs to try and find Mom. I... I saw someone in a movie do this thing once where they pressed down on a dying person's chest to keep their heart beating, and it worked in the movie."

Levi's heart sank as he felt Vera shudder in his arms.

"I... I was so small. My little hands were on his heart, pushing down as hard as they could, and I couldn't help him. I was too small. I felt his heart stop beating."

"I'm sorry."

She finally decided, "You're right, Levi. Everything can slip away so easily."

"I know."


	22. In Which Thomas Pays a Visit

Moving out of Vera's old classroom and organizing her new room only took two hours. In that time, Levi mostly dusted and disinfected and vacuumed, while Vera was the one who put posters up and set up her computer and monitor. They finished the whole ordeal around noon.

They came home after a short trip to the grocery store, during which Levi made a point to avoid Johnathan, who was working at the second register. They decided on making some chicken dinner that Levi didn't know how to pronounce. Vera tried to teach him how to say it a hundred times when they got home and swore it wasn't difficult. Levi simply couldn't pull off the accent, and it made Vera laugh; that's why he kept trying.

Levi enjoyed being in the kitchen with Vera. This time, she made him put on an apron, insisting that it would be sexy and that was why he should do it. She took short breaks every so often to take Levi's hand and dance with him to music on the record player, and he'd have to pretend not to like it because it was in his nature, but he did. He liked dancing with her. He liked it when she came up to him with a spoon and rested a hand under his chin and told him to taste whatever sauce was on the spoon. And he liked the longer breaks they took to stand against the counter and kiss just a bit—mostly while waiting for the water to boil on the stove or for the timer on the oven to beep.

At some point after they pulled the strangely-named cookies out of the oven, Vera discovered that she'd forgotten a few things at the store for the also-strangely-named main course. She decided it was best to leave Levi to dress up the counter with the food they'd been making in case Francesca came while she was gone. She said that Francesca and the kids spent a few hours snacking while they talked, so lots of food sitting out was necessary. He thought it sounded a little gross, so he made sure to cover everything with tinfoil and double check the room for flies.

After she left, Levi was alone in the house for a short period of time, during which he went into the living room to look at all of the old photos of Vera and her family. Then there was a thud from the door. Levi had to be the one to answer, though he was dismayed because he'd have to socialize with someone he didn't know. He set his dish towel over his shoulder and went for the door, and when he opened it, his eyebrows raised curiously.

"Hey, man. Didn't know you were still in town."

"Thomas." Levi didn't move to let him in. "What do you want?"

"I heard Fran was coming over. Where's Vera? Her car's not here."

"She's at the store."

"Oh, alright. May I?" He gestured to the door with a nod of his head. "I was hoping to get a look at that arm of yours while I'm here."

Levi decided to step aside and let Thomas in. They sat at the table, where Thomas took Levi's arm up in his hands and began to feel the skin. He moved it left, right, up, down, turned it a few times, tapped the elbow—all the while asking where and if Levi felt discomfort. He did not. They had a strange, awkward silence between them in that time. The only real comments made were medical questions: does it hurt? Do you feel tension here? Have you been icing it? Levi was a one-word-answer person, and Thomas took it as a clear indifference to any sort of conversation.That being said, he decided against his better judgment to make a tiny amount of small talk (thinly veiled as medical speak).

"It looks all good to me. You heal pretty quickly... or you've got quite the pain tolerance."

"Yeah."

The coldness in Levi's tone drove Thomas to stand. He went for a glass of water with a frankness in his tone: "Listen... I know we got off on a bad start—me being drunk and just awful to Vera and you. I try not to get drunk because I know how much of an asshole I can get. So I get it if you don't like me, but I don't want to be in a bad place with you, man."

"Why do you care?"

"Because Vera's important to me, and I can tell you're important to her." He sighed. "We have a history. I don't want someone new in the picture messing with that because I decided to be a jerk and get drunk."

"You're in love with her, aren't you?"

Thomas gave Levi an off-put stare and a tilt of his head. Almost angrily, he replied, "Yeah. Yeah, I am."

"Who Vera hangs out with isn't my business, and I don't want to get in the way of your friendship. She told me about the baby and how you were great in staying with her. You're a good guy for that." Levi stood up, cracking his neck. "But you did slip up that night. We both know what would have happened if I hadn't been there to get you off of her. I'm not going to act as if I like you, or as if your history with her justifies what happened that night."

Thomas's voice darkened just then: "You're right, but what does it matter to you?"

Vera had said she didn't think it was a good idea to be public as boyfriend and girlfriend for a while, but Thomas already knew the gist of Levi's answer. Levi didn't have to say anything.

"Oh, you're in love with her too? Think I'm going to steal her from underneath you?"

He scoffed a bit. "In your dreams."

"My dreams, huh?" Thomas asked, springing himself away from the counter and toward the back door. As he passed Levi, he whispered, "I've taken Vera every which way in this house—couches, chairs, counters; you name it. I know the way she tastes, the places she likes being touched, the way to get her to cry out for me, the positions she likes. You've got nothing. Think about that."

Thomas pulled a cigarette out of a box from his pocket and stepped away. Levi was prepared to punch, but he didn't. For Vera's sake, he held off, sticking his hands in his pockets. Levi could have killed Thomas right there if he really wanted to. He could have knocked him to his knees and kicked his jaw so hard his head came off. But before he could say anything else, the back door shut, and Thomas was gone.

Thomas was right too. That was the shitty part. Levi was Vera's boyfriend now, but someone else had been before. He wasn't angry at Vera at all; he knew he couldn't be angry at her for having dated before. Levi was a lot of things, but he wasn't some shallow, sexist teenager. However, the thought of Vera underneath another man and crying out someone else's name didn't sit well with Levi. He thought about how, when he left for his world, Vera would end up with another man—maybe Thomas again—and Levi wouldn't be the one she kissed or danced in the kitchen with. His stomach churned. He was in deep water with his feelings for Vera, and he just didn't know how to handle every emotion.

Hange would have known what to tell him. They would have said something about... something. Levi didn't know what. Maybe Hange would have been able to tell Levi everything he was feeling—and why, too. He knew jealousy was anger, but he didn't know why he was angry. Even Eren, for god's sakes, would be able to tell him what to do to make himself feel better. Eren was in touch with his emotions. Levi envied him for it. Levi had never known how to feel about anything. He went to the bathroom and splashed cold water over his face.

At that point, the doorbell rang again, and Levi went to answer it like before. He thought, God, another person. What, is Luca gonna walk in too? Every man who's ever slept with Vera? Instead, a woman stood in the door—Francesca, he presumed—and two children raced into the house with yelping and howling laughter. The woman in the doorway had an interesting, motherly face. She resembled Vera in some small ways—curly, dark hair, hooked nose, tan skin—but the two honestly didn't look alike at all. It made sense; she was Vera's sister-in-law, not her blood sister.

With a concoction of surprise and curiosity on her face, the woman said, "You're not Vera."

"She's at the store."

"Then who are you?"

"I'm Levi."

She perked up just then and hobbled into the room; she was obviously pregnant. "Oh, wow! She mentioned you were here. I'm Francesca, Vera's sister-in-law. So nice to meet you, Levi. Where are the pizzelle?"

"The what?"

She looked at him with funny eyes. "What's your last name?"

"Ackerman."

"Ackerman... That's German, isn't it. Of course you wouldn't know. I'll find the pizzelle myself."

She didn't say anything else. For about fifteen minutes before Vera arrived back home, Levi stood in the doorway with a squint, watching the strange woman poke and prod about the kitchen as if it was her own house. She seemed so comfortable despite not living there, but Levi guessed that was what having a family was like: total comfort.


	23. In Which Levi Feels Inadequate

After Vera came home, there was a short period where Levi was included in the conversation between her, Francesca, and Thomas—mostly because he was the subject. Francesca's main focus was how, after so many years of not dating, Vera had managed to have such a handsome man in her house and wasn't dating him. Levi and Vera had opted for not telling people just yet—because a day wasn't even long enough for them to process the change themselves, let alone Vera's family or friends.

Francesca apologized over and over for accidentally trapping Vera's friend into family brunch. As long as Vera didn't mind, it didn't really matter to Levi when he met her family. Besides, it wasn't a "meeting the family" type of brunch; it was just a normal family gathering

Of course, Levi was interrogated a bit. He was asked about his job—and so he had to lie and say he was the first thing that came to mind: a florist. Part of him wished he hadn't looked out the window when he said it, or else he likely wouldn't have thought of flowers, but Francesca thought it was charming and "contrasted his personality attractively." When asked where he went to college, he said Seattle Central because Vera had talked about how a student of hers was going there. All of his answers were a little jumbled, but he passed without Francesca or Thomas thinking he was making anything up. Francesca seemed to find him charming.

"How did you two meet?" he was asked, but Vera took point on that as well.

She said, "We knew each other in high school. He was visiting at first because he had a job lined up and wanted to look around. We thought we could catch up if he stayed."

"Did you find an apartment yet, Levi? I've heard about some great places downtown if you're still in need of a place. A client of mine—I'm a psychiatrist—is a real estate agent."

"Yes, I have."

She laughed a little bit and nodded. "He doesn't talk much, does he?"

"Levi doesn't have much to say," Thomas remarked with a slight smirk, sipping on his beer. It was his first of the day, and he was nursing it slowly, Levi noticed.

There was an awkward silence then. Vera took up Levi's hand beneath the table and gave him a sort of inquisitive stare, to which he just looked away. Thomas was taunting him, looking for a fight. Levi didn't like Thomas much, but he didn't plan on lashing out or even mentioning what he'd said about Vera. Maybe the next time he pulled a shit move like that, but not now.

"Have you heard anything from Adriano?"

This was the part of the conversation where Levi (as well as Thomas) tuned out; Vera and Francesca had begun to mix naturally in and out of a language neither of the two men could understand. Vera watched Levi stand and walk toward the cabinet, where he began to gather things for his regular cup of tea.

"I got a call from him about a week ago, but it was short. They always are. And a letter came in the mail, but... it wasn't Adriano's. It was a friend of his. I think they mixed up the envelopes because this was addressed to a Penelope Fielders."

"Vinnie Fielders is in Adriano's squadron. They've been friends for a while, I think."

"Alright. Have you gotten a letter?"

Vera sighed. "No, not yet. But I hope I will soon. I know he's alright, but it is worrisome."

"I know. If it's anything, Adriano told me this may be his last tour before he decides to come home."

"For good?" She sprang.

The other woman also jumped. "Yes, for good."

"Oh, thank God!"

"But I haven't told Michaelo or Valentina yet," Francesca whispered, looking into the living room with thinned eyes. "You know how Adriano is; he might decide to do another tour. I don't want to get the kids's hopes up in case he changes his mind."

"Of course. I'll keep silent—and I'll tell Levi."

This made the man's ears perk up. He turned and asked, "What?"

"I'll tell you in private." She turned back to Francesca. "Are they staying the night? The kids, I mean."

"They were asking to, but if Levi is here, I don't want to impose on whatever you two might have going on."

"We're not doing anything," he said then.

Now Vera was surprised. She gave him another look, but smiled at Francesca. "He's right. He's been in the garage, and I just finished my work for the school earlier today."

"Hey, Fran, maybe we can take the night and check out this new bar downtown," Thomas joked, slanting a wink her way. "No kids."

"Have you made it a mission to hit on every one of the Antonelli women, Tom?" she retorted.

"You're a nice breed."

God, Levi hated him. He realized he was joking (obviously, since Francesca was married with two kids) and that the women found it funny, but Levi couldn't stand it. He thought about spilling his tea on Thomas's shirt or his head (if he could reach). His mind played through all of the ways he'd punch Thomas if Vera and he weren't best friends.

For about four hours, Levi, Francesca, and Vera sat in the kitchen with cards, food, and random conversation about this and that—mostly politics and social issues that Levi didn't really understand, some stuff about the women's respective jobs, and the kids. On the other hand, Thomas ducked in and out, often with Valentina and Michaelo swinging on his arms like monkeys. Levi could see Vera smile every time they came in through the room, and he wanted to ask her about it, but he didn't. Instead, he tried to find out which things were the pizzelle without having to ask. Even if it wasn't his culture, he wanted to be in on it. Thomas seemed to be a little more in tune than he was. Not knowing what was being said, not knowing what food was what, not being able to say the kids' names in just the right way—it made him wonder if he was missing something that Vera wanted. He hated the thought. 

When Thomas and Francesca left (about an hour apart because Thomas had to work early the next day), it was just Vera, Levi, and the kids. Vera pulled Levi aside and asked if he was okay sleeping in her room for the weekend so the kids could share his bed, and he agreed if she promised to triple-wash the sheets after they left.

"I'll bleach them if it'll make you happy," she told him and kissed his cheek.

"It really would."

She went into the living room with a smile and approached Valentina, the little girl, who sat on the couch with a stuffed animal in hand. Levi watched Vera bend over and mess around a bit with her. Valentina had long, black, curly hair like Vera's, but she wore it in little bows that matched her pink dress. She couldn't have been more than five years old. The boy, Michaelo, must have been a little younger. He was a half-head shorter than Valentina and had managed to fall asleep on the floor. Though they had the same features—same hooked nose, brown eyes, curly hair—it was strange how Vera and the children bore no resemblance.

Levi came into the living room and stood over Michaelo. The little thing was drooling on Vera's carpet. He heard her say to Valentina, "Michaelo is out for the night. Do you want to go to bed too, bambina?"

She gave Vera a timid nod, looking up at Levi, who was admittedly a menacing figure. The expression on her niece's face made Vera laugh as she heaved Valentina up in her arms. In her little-kid voice, she made a point to praise her for being a big girl and growing so much. She asked Levi to take Michaelo, which he reluctantly did after checking to see that the kid hadn't peed himself. Levi wasn't sure if three-year-olds still wore diapers or if, by that age, they could use a toilet. He followed Vera to what had been his room for a while and set the kid down in the bed, under the covers. Vera, in the meantime, tried to change a sleepy Valentina into an astronaut sleeping onesie.

They put the kids to bed completely and went into Vera's room. Vera took a shower and slipped into bed, and then Levi pulled her up into his arms. The two fell asleep shortly, Vera's back against Levi's chest.


	24. In Which Vera has Flowers in her Hair

The last thing Levi expected to hear when he woke up was three separate sets of breathing. The first one was Vera's strong, steady breathing, of course; the other two were a little more ragged, and they almost dissolved into high-pitched snoring. He opened his eyes with a frown, a little less dismayed to find Vera still in his arms (having remembered his nightmare from the day before). It was still dark out, so he didn't see much initially, but when he peered over her body, he managed to make out the figures of two children they had left in the next room over. Vera was holding Michaelo close, his curly, black head of hair pressed against her chest and his thumb in his mouth. Valentina, who lay on the outside, had separated from the bunch that was Levi, Vera, and Michaelo.

Vera, in her sleep, wore just the tiniest smile. Levi posted himself on one elbow and watched her for just a minute. There was a certain vulnerability he could see on her face. She looked young and healthy-healthier than normal, somehow. He watched the way she pulled Michaelo closer to her and wondered if she liked having the kids in the bed with them. After a few minutes, she stirred, and Levi made a short move to lie back down so not to seem strange for watching her.

She groaned softly. "Mhm... Good morning, Levi," she whispered, pressing her body further into his. "When did these two show up?"

"You didn't pull them in?" Levi pushed her hair aside and kissed the back of her neck.

"No, I didn't. They do this when they stay over; I should have warned you. They won't come to bed with me at bedtime, but they will wind up here by morning."

"Just don't make me lay next to them," he whispered in her ear.

Vera chuckled a bit and turned her head just enough so Levi could reach and kiss her. She then moved to rise from the sheets and invited Levi to come down and have coffee with her. Apparently, the children didn't usually wake up until about eight, and it was still only six or so. Vera and Levi slipped out of bed and had coffee and leftover pizzelle.

"How do you like your tea?" Vera asked, coming up behind Levi.

"I can make it," he replied, assuming she was offering to make it for him now.

She wrapped her arms around his waist. "I want to know how to do it just right. Eren told me you're very particular with your tea."

"I'm particular with everything."

After a moment of badgering, he conceded and showed her exactly how he liked it. Only, when she found out, she laughed a little bit; apparently, he just made tea the way the instruction box said it-only he followed it to the letter: steep two teaspoons of tea leaves in one cup of water for four minutes and thirty seconds at 205ºF exactly. Most people stuck the tea-bag into hot water for a minute or so before drinking, and that was why Levi always hated other people's tea. After Vera explained this and said she'd start making him tea, he told her he liked the honey she'd been getting from the farmer's market in it as well. She could add as much as she wanted.

The two kids cried out about an hour later, at which point Vera decided to go upstairs and dress both herself and them. Levi made eggs on the stove for the children. However, when they came down, his food was immediately rejected for a bag of sugary cereal that Valentina had snuck into her backpack. Vera ended up eating the eggs instead.

They decided to go outside so Vera could pick from the tomato plants. Levi stood against the fence gate, eyes switching between her and the two kids, who were rolling down the hill full of flowers. They came back up every thirty seconds, laughing and screaming, only to roll back down again. Levi cringed at the sight. They'd be too dirty to enter the house by the time they ran out of energy. They spent another twenty minutes spinning around the clothesline poles, falling over, and then getting back up when the dizziness wore off. They chased each other around the house for a long time as well before Vera told them to stay where she could see them.

They then took to picking flowers at the edge of the hill. Valentina was the first to come bumbling through the gate. She ran up to Vera, holding a daisy out in one hand and her other hand empty, palm up. Seeing this, Vera knelt and dropped a single cherry tomato into Valentina's hand.

"Is the flower payment for my tomatoes?" she asked cheerily.

"It goes in your hair."

Vera laughed, setting her basket down, and undid her braid. She dipped her head forward so that Valentina could reach, and the little girl stuck the flower into Vera's black hair. She ran off then, and Vera went back to working, oblivious to Levi's gaze. He watched as Valentina brought over another flower and put it in Vera's hair, and as Michaelo followed suit and even asked Valentina to put flowers in his hair. It went on until both children decided they were too tired to keep running around, at which point Vera was practically dripping with daisies, so she took the two inside. She came back out and, giving Levi a little smile, shook some of the flowers out of her hair. Levi pushed himself off of the side of the house and stood in front of Vera.

"I broke the fence gate on accident," she stated before seeing Levi's eyes staring at her hair. "I still have flowers in my hair, don't I?"

"Why would you let them do that?" Levi asked, raising one hand to gently remove the daisies from her curls. "There's pollen and dirt."

"It made them smile. And I felt pretty."

"It's still dirty," he said, but he continued to brush through her hair. "How long do they lay down for?"

"About an hour. Francesca is coming to get them around dinner. I promised a picnic earlier, so I'm going to start that in a minute."

"I'll help."

"Are you sure you want to sit on a blanket in the dirt?" she somewhat-teased.

Levi took another long look at Vera, watching the wind push through her hair and the sun beat down on her olive face. His lips twitched, daring to curl upward, but he didn't let it happen. He told her instead, "It is disgusting, but you need someone to carry stuff."

Vera didn't buy it, of course, but she gave him a smile. "Now are the flowers gone?"

"They are."

"Thank you very much." She gave him a long, very sweet kiss. "Let's go inside."


	25. In Which Someone Runs Through the House

Francesca sat down for some coffee and a twenty minute chat before she finally took Valentina and Michaelo home. Usually they would have stayed for an extra day to make the whole weekend, but Valentina's first gymnastics class across town and started in an hour. Francesca said she might have to drop them off again soon in case she had to go downstate and see her mother, who had Alzheimer's, but the whole trip was still up in the air. As they left, the kids both hugged Vera by her legs and tried to get her to go with them. She refused and managed to lift them both off of her and into the van with a kiss goodbye.

Once Francesca had driven off through the trees, Vera turned to Levi on the dirt driveway and said, "You look like someone who wants to start disinfecting his bedroom."

Levi glanced at her for a moment, but his eyes trailed back to the van as it pulled out into the street. It was a shiny, white blip in the dust before it went behind the trees.

"What's wrong? You've been acting funny all day." She put her hand on his shoulder.

"Nothing."

"Are you sure?"

Levi walked into the house without a word.

Vera gave him a strange look as he walked past her, into the house, but she decided not to make anything of it. Once inside, she handed Levi the bucket full of cleaning supplies which he had seemed to favor over the past two months and told him to go ham on his room. She collected the sheets, threw them in the washer, and waited in the basement to avoid him. But, at some point, around three or so, he came downstairs and told her he was going out on the trails.

"Do you want me to come with you?"

"No."

"Okay. Will you be back soon?"

"Before dark."

"Okay."

As she heard the door close, her lips pursed. Levi's heavy footsteps crossed the kitchen upstairs and went out the back door. On one hand, Vera was glad that Levi was finally just comfortable enough to go out and do things by himself; sometimes she worried that he might never trust her world enough to be a part of it. However, he was leaving because something was wrong and he wouldn't talk about it. Vera didn't want the only times where she could console him to be when he was reliving trauma in his head. When and if he had a problem, she wished he would be able to talk to her about it.

She reeled back at some point and said out loud, "Maybe that's how he cools down. Maybe he's someone who doesn't like to be around people when he's upset..." Vera was usually the opposite.

After she was sure Levi was going to be gone for a while, Vera went back upstairs and began to conduct her usual business. She cleaned the kitchen sink. She read the newspaper. She filed through emails. She layered the lasagna and set it into the oven-set the timer: one hour, forty five minutes. Then she played the piano just a bit. She hadn't played since Levi arrived because of how little she liked playing in front of people. She played for fun, but she also played for herself. Beside that, even if she was sure that Levi wasn't going to comment, she didn't want him hearing and thinking anything of it; for all she knew, he was a virtuoso who would judge her casual, rusty playing.

The sun got lower as the evening carried on. At some point, Vera decided to take a run down to grab the mail, knowing she had forgotten earlier today with the children and all. But she couldn't find her keys to lock up because-even if for just a few moments-she never liked to leave the house open. Not while living out in the middle of what was practically nowhere. She searched for five minutes before opting for the spare key, which she had stuck in the soil of one of the hanging baskets on the porch, and then made out for her stroll the quarter mile down to the road. It was really only a three minute walk there, and another three back, so she didn't mind walking (not in the summer, at least; in the winter, she took the car).

Taxes, bills, a few coupons, and not much else. Vera never got any interesting mail. She also saw no letter from Adriano, which made the walk back home even more dreadful. At least it was warm out. She looked toward the opening to the trails-a small, distant blip of brown splitting into the green bushes that covered the tree trunks-and wondered what Levi was doing. It had been maybe five hours or so. Was he safe? Maybe he got home while she was out and was wondering where she'd gone.

As she opened the door, she heard a rustle upstairs. "Levi? I know you were upset earlier, but I made lasagna. Come down and eat."

"Levi?!" a high voice screeched.

Vera's heart race as she heard some footsteps pounding across the floor upstairs. She ran to the kitchen and reached for the knife holder. The big butcher's knife made a 'shing' noise as Vera snagged it from the wooden knife block. She pointed it out toward the entrance to the kitchen and waited. God, she wished Levi were back. Where the hell was he?

"You said Levi! Am I here? Did I make it? Vera?!"

A person stomped into the kitchen and stopped dead in their tracks upon seeing the knife. The intruder had brown, messy hair and a thick pair of goggles over their eyes. Vera's knees went weak, and her hands began to shake.

"How do you know who I am?"

"Eren told us about this place!" They giggled. "Wow, it's not at all how I imagined it. But you! You're so pretty-you're way prettier than Eren described!"

Vera hollered, "Who are you?"

"Oh, pardon me! Hange Zoe-Levi's very best friend!"

Ordinarily, Vera wouldn't have believed it, but the 3DMG gear at their hips and the green cape Levi had described were enough for her. Besides, Levi had talked about Hange; the person in front of her completely fit the bill. Glasses, excitable, a little messy, almost childish, and very curious. "Oh, my god... You crossed over."

"Yeah, I did! Isn't that weird? Where's Captain Shortypants anyway? I need to see him and give him this note; we've all thought he was dead, you know. Good thing Eren came back and told us he wasn't-well, just me, but that doesn't matter."

Setting the knife down, Vera went to say something, but Hange had already ducked out of the kitchen as if to look around. They continued to blabber about how distressed everyone at home had been about Levi's supposed death; people had been losing hope because of it, but it wasn't a big deal; no one had died since he left. No attacks had occurred since he left either. That was all Vera got from Hange before she heard the door to the basement unlock and bouncy footsteps follow. Vera gasped.

"Woah, it's dark down here."

"Hange, no!" Lunging to the basement door, Vera tried to stop them, but the door shut on its own weight and momentum.

When she reached the door, Vera swung it open, accidentally knocking it against her temple. She stumbled. Her feet pounded down to the basement and found it as empty as could be. Nothing but boxes and boxes against walls. No Hange. The floor swayed a little underfoot as Vera went back up the stairs, her hands gripping both sides of the railing. Maybe she was imagining things? Maybe Hange hadn't been here at all.

As Vera came back into the kitchen, she looked up and saw, through the window, Levi coming over the hill with a large backpack on his shoulder. She gasped and bumbled forward, forgetting her shoes. The door busted open, and Vera went running to meet him.

"Levi-oh, my God!"

He immediately dropped the backpack upon seeing her, and his eyes went wide. "You're bleeding. What the fuck happened? Did someone-"

She caught him in a hard embrace, making him stumble back a bit to catch her. Her chest heaved as she breathed him in for a moment. Levi let her hug him, even hugging back, but his main concern was the blood dripping down the side of her head.

"I..." she gulped. "I saw Hange."


	26. In Which They Do Not Talk About Hange

Vera flinched. "That hurts."

"Don't be a baby," Levi muttered, dabbing the alcohol-soaked cotton ball against her head. "Maybe if you hadn't been so careless, you wouldn't be in this situation."

"I told you: I was surprised by Hange."

"How did they even get here?"

Vera shrugged. "If I could tell you, I would."

The two were in the larger bathroom upstairs. Vera was placed down on the toilet seat, letting clean up the cut she got from when the door hit her head; she hadn't realized that was the cause, but Levi had seen blood on the door and almost killed her for it. He cleaned it up well, and now he was with her, one hand holding hers and the other working delicately on the cut. He patched it up with some bandaids and stepped away, removing the rubber gloves Vera had offered him (because he was so hesitant to clean it but wouldn't let Vera do it herself).

"I know this Hange thing is fresh, and we need to talk about it... but it's late, and my head hurts," Vera said, blinking harshly. She could feel a pounding in the front of her head, just behind her forehead.

A silence followed in reply. There wasn't much to be said. Levi simply reached down both arms and picked Vera up. He carried her to the bedroom, untucked the covers, and gently set her down on the right side of the bed, which she seemed to favor even when sleeping alone. He'd once walked past her room while she was still asleep and saw her laying on the right edge as if waiting for someone to come and take up the left half. She'd never been married; Levi wondered what she might be waiting for.

Once he slipped the covers over her shoulders, Levi moved to duck out of the room, but Vera asked, "Aren't you going to sleep here tonight?"

"I thought that was a one-night thing—because of the kids," he stated plainly, not wanting to let on or admit to anything.

"It doesn't have to be..."

Levi sucked his teeth. "I'm not a good sleeper. I'd keep you up."

"Oh, yeah... okay." She lay down on her side, letting her back face the door where Levi stood so not to look at him. "Close the door then."

What the hell was Levi doing? He asked himself that quite harshly as he looked at Vera's figure. It had sunken into the excessively soft, cushy mattress, and the white covers of her bed were gracefully draped over the curvature of her body. She liked Levi—at least, to some extent, though Levi was never really sure how truly anyone liked him at all. But the point was that he wanted to sleep with her, and she wanted to sleep with him, so why was he ready to walk out of the room?

Levi sighed as he stood there. "Fine. Get out of your day clothes."

"What?"

"Get out of your day clothes; they're dirty. I'll be there in five minutes."

He left the room, undressed himself, and put on the pajama pants Vera had bought him when he first arrived. He hated them mostly because of how used he was to wearing his uniform when he slept, but he wasn't going to sleep in Vera's bed with his day clothing on—not when he'd just washed her sheets. He picked up the book on his nightstand, brushed his teeth, and went back into Vera's room. Just as he opened the door, he saw her pull her shirt all the way down and over her torso, only having caught a glimpse of her back.

"I'm going to read. Keep the light on," he told her.

Levi lay himself down on the left side of the bed, propping up the pillow, and turned on the bedside light. He watched Vera tie her silk scarf around her hair before she came over to the bed. Though he acted indifferent when she walked over, Levi had made a point of positioning himself in a way that might encourage Vera to lay up against him; he had sat himself up against his pillow, extending one arm across the length of her pillow. If Levi was going to sleep in Vera's room, he at least wanted to feel her close. He didn't like the thought of having to be so separated from her while in the same room.

She did just as he hoped she would and moved to curl up against him. Her head rested over his heart to hear it beating. It was slow and steady and strong. Her other hand began to drift up and down the belt bruises on the side of his chest—which he knew he got from wearing the 3DMG belts all of the time (he usually fell asleep in them on accident).

Levi looked down at her in the low light from the yellow lamp on his side of the bed. Everything about Vera seemed so generously delicate. She wanted him there, even if he might wake her up on accident or make the bed too hot or cause any sort of inconvenience; above all of that, the fact that she wanted him at all despite knowing he could be gone—crossing back to his world at any second—was more astounding. Levi had never felt wanted before. And any of his insecurities and fears that she didn't really love him fell apart just for that moment... that moment where he watched her trace her finger across his bruises and press her ear even closer into his chest.

Levi reached over to the lamp and turned it off, and he set his book on the nightstand. His arms wrapped around Vera's form, and he pressed her against himself as if she might slip away at any second. God, she was beautiful.

"I thought you were going to read," she mentioned in a whisper.

"Yeah." Levi pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead, his eyebrows curling upward slightly. He felt his eyes growing hotter, so he shut them and tried his hardest not to let anything slip out.

"You can stay up if you want to. You said you're not a good sleeper."

"I want to be like this," he said. "I'll be fine like this."

"Levi."

"What, brat?"

"Do you ever worry that you might cross over in your sleep?"

He didn't say anything; he only shifted uncomfortably. The thought hadn't occurred to him until that moment, and it created a slight churning sensation in his stomach. He could leave, and it would hurt like a bitch, and he knew that—he thought about it a lot. But to leave without saying goodbye? That would have killed him.

"Do you?" he asked.

"Yes." She sighed. "I worry that you might cross over every time you leave the room. If you left, I could handle it... but I don't want to skip saying goodbye."

He pulled her in closer. It was good to know that they thought something the same, he thought. Levi still felt like he could never tell what she was thinking, but maybe he didn't have to be able to tell. Maybe that was one thing he had that Tom didn't.

"We won't. We won't skip goodbyes."


	27. In Which Hange's Letter Unfolds

It had been on the pillow in Levi's bedroom when he went to change that morning. Clean, and white, and enclosed with red wax stamping

* * *

> Squad Captain Levi Ackerman.
> 
> Oh, wow, Levi! When Jean and Connie told me Eren was missing, I almost lost my head! You first, and then him!? We wouldn't stand a chance against the titans anymore. Not that we need to... Oh, by the Walls, Levi, you should hear about how things are going back here! That's why I'm writing this, actually. I'm a little worried I might die from something like foreign bacteria, so if you find my body in the basement—the basement, right? That's where Eren tells me he ended up when he crossed over—then you have this note with a complete explanation of everything going on here. Or maybe I'll cross over and immediately cross back. There really is no way of knowing, so this is the safest possible option.
> 
> After we decided to call Eren missing, since there was no evidence of any kidnapping or murder (he got shoved into a closet and locked in, after all, and the lock was still on when Jean and Connie opened the thing up), things got a little strange. Mikasa was freaking out—going real crazy. Armin's been taking collateral damage since then, letting Mikasa stay in his room. I let it happen because they seem close—and it's great to see our soldiers getting along together! I thought everything would fall apart when you left. It seems as if political conflict has stopped too. No huge events have happened, no war meetings, no Scout deaths (except for one soldier who got dysentery two weeks ago, so I guess I mean no titan-related deaths). The world has been put on pause. We haven't had any titans to deal with since you died (and by that I mean crossed worlds). Nothing has been happening. We keep searching for titans past the Walls, but they don't seem to be... active. They're all sitting around and looking at us, but when we move closer, they don't try to attack, and not just the abnormals. I even stood on a normal titan and he didn't do anything about it—right on his leg, Levi! Right on his _leg_ , the beautiful bastard! Wow, it was something! I was jittery all morning. I've got three new subjects—Vinny, Donny, and Remmy! They're not active even under the sunlight, but I swear Vinny and Remmy are normals... Donny looks more like an abnormal—just by how he holds his jaw, I'd say. Abnormals sometimes have that funny way of hanging their jaws open, I've noticed.
> 
> I think that whatever's been happening here, the titans becoming inactive, may be a result of you being gone. Now, that would sound odd on its own; people die all the time here, and it doesn't stop the titans. But Eren has informed me that our world is a part of some fictional series in whatever world you've crossed over into. Can't believe I'm a character! I wonder if anyone likes my character. I'd bet they all hate yours. I'm not sure if that's really true (the whole fictional world thing), but Eren's brought back some stories about the things your friend has told him. If you were a major character, assuming this is all true, and Eren is the main character, then it would make sense that nothing happens here anymore; no character means no plot, right!? It makes sense when you think of it that way. So maybe you staying over there is a good thing—for now, at least. It seems practical, I suppose, but that's only when you look at our world as if it's fictional. I don't want to make any decisions based only on that far-fetched concept, as cool as it may be.
> 
> When I heard you weren't actually dead, I almost went on a rampage. Hearing you hadn't made it home with us was devastating news. The blow to morale was heavy, and it's a little boring not having my favorite shorty around—and I'm starting to smell a bit, but that's not as important. You didn't have a real funeral, and I'm a bit sorry about that. Armin reassured me that you wouldn't want a funeral. In addition to that, we decided that the public didn't need to know that humanity's strongest soldier had died. Enough of the Scouts were devastated enough to consider resignation. I managed to talk them out of it. There was a small ceremony between me and your squad members; we burned your second cape and a cravat. Knowing you're not really dead makes me regret it a bit...
> 
> Eren, who's standing next to me as I write, says you're also involved with a girl, and _ooh_! Is that shocking or what?! I wish you could tell me about her yourself. I honestly didn't know you were capable of being really involved with someone—I mean, I assumed you weren't a virgin, but having a real-life girlfriend!? Absolutely outrageous (in a good way! Good for you!). I'm shaking! I want to meet her. Eren said her name is Dr. Vera Antonelli—which is good. It's good that she's a doctor. You deserve a smart woman. I hope she's hot too. Sexy as can be, and a real clean freak too. Eren says she is pretty. Gorgeous, actually (his words, not mine). He said she's got nice, long hair, and she's shorter than you, and she grows her own food even though you have so much access to food over there! She also treats you really kindly even though you're a jerk (also his words, not mine). And she has a bunch of land too! Score!! I wish I could see it. He says you have a 'refrigerator' too, now, and that it keeps food cold. Does it really keep ice cold too!? That'd be brilliant. Ice is such a hassle.
> 
> Okay, Shorty, I'm going to tell you something about women: they like flowers! Flowers! I know, I know— _'flowers are gross. Flowers have pollen. Flowers grow in the dirt, how disgusting.'_ Yeah, get over yourself and go pick her some damn flowers. Oh, and tell her she's pretty. I bet you don't do that often enough. Girls like to be told they're pretty. I bet you call her a brat and make fun of her for the way she laughs or something. And cut the shit jokes out! They're not funny! Oh, and make her dinner. Fold her laundry too. Give her a massage (without trying to... you know... *wink!* I'm winking now because I'm talking about _sex_!). God, I wonder what she sees in you. You're so mean, and I bet you're too short to make up for it. That's a joke; don't cross back over just to kill me please. Be nice to her, Levi. Be very, very nice.
> 
> I don't know what your plan is for returning or not returning. It is possible, as we have seen. Eren tells me that you have two reasons for not being able to come home yet: an injured arm, and damaged 3DMG gear. I've enclosed some maintenance instructions in hopes that they'll help, but my main motive for trying to cross over in the first place is to help you. I could repair your gear up real quick! But it's like I've said: if you're reading this, I've most likely died of a viral infection or poisonous air or something. It's irrational, but it's a good measure to take, right? Eren says I'm not known for rationality anyway.
> 
> It would be good to have you back, but I understand that having a girlfriend does come in the way of it. The best thing to do is let go before you're too attached or— _oh, hell_ —bring her here! She's a physicist, right? She could help out with something, I'm sure. She wouldn't have to be a member of the Scouts if that's the case (though she could stay at base so you could be together). Eren says becoming a doctor requires a lot more training there than it does here, and I'm betting doctors there are a little more accredited here. I wish people actually had to learn to be doctors officially before getting to call themselves one. Eren says Vera told him she studied for nine years before she finally got her official 'doctorate's degree,' Vera would be more than qualified if you're really serious about her. We could set her up in a laboratory with a bunch of chalkboards and have her work on something or other, depending on what kind of physics she knows how to do. Maybe she could teach about the 3DMG and its motion; that is where the cadets have the hardest time, isn't it? Maybe if they knew the physical aspect of it, they could nail it without so many broken bones. I know we'd have a place for her—I just know it.
> 
> A more serious note now: whether or not you decide to bring Vera with you, you do have a duty. You signed up for this, and unless you want to officially retire, it's part of your job to come back at some point. I could consider this an official unpaid leave (instead of an M.I.A. case or a sabbatical leave) for an unspecified amount of time; the higher-ups would say you deserve it, but they would try to pry into where you've gone. I'm trying my best to cover all of this up in a way that makes it so you can return... But, as far as everyone below my rank is concerned, you are dead. The Scouts think you're dead. I know you've told me it's bad to lie unless necessary, but I strongly believe that knowledge of a world without titans would cause public outcry. There's no way to prove or disprove the idea, and Eren could get locked up for being insane. The public already distrusts Shifters as it is... I hope you don't think this is a bad decision. I know you'd say that your opinion doesn't matter because I'm in charge, not you, but it does. I think your opinion matters.
> 
> I miss you, Levi. Deep down, I know we're friends, but sometimes I wonder if maybe that's all in my head. You've never seemed to warm up to me much, even when it was you, me, Erwin, Mike—the whole gang. But with Erwin is gone, and Erwin was always the one who told me that you saw us as mutuals and friends. He's not here anymore. I miss Erwin. Him dying was a lot, but with you leaving a month later... I feel like I don't have anyone to help me make decisions or be good or feel good. I want to be good at this job. The Scouts deserve someone good for all they're sacrificing. Even the ones who die on the first mission are contributing to this fight, at the end of the day, so they deserve a leader who's good. Erwin did this job so much better than I do.
> 
> I don't want you to consider me in deciding whether or not to come back. But, if you do, I promise you won't be put in charge. I know you'd hate that. If you don't come back, I hope everything turns out well with you and Vera. She sounds like she's good for you. Have lots of little Levi babies—and name one after me, please!
> 
> I wish you the best of luck in whatever you choose. If this is my final living goodbye, then I hope we meet again in death. Dedicate your heart, Levi.
> 
> —Hange Zoe, Survey Corps Commander


	28. In Which the Gate Outside is Repaired

Once Levi heard the front door close, he immediately jumped and shoved Hange's letter under his leg as if it were some huge secret. There wasn't anything incriminating or evil about having it, but he felt as if there might have been for a second. He grabbed a book, opened to a random page, and watched as Alex—the more likable of Vera's two main friends in Levi's eyes—came in. He gave Levi a grin upon looking into the living room.

"Hey. How are you?"

"I'm fine."

"Good," he said, his teeth showing a little more. "Vera said the fence gate broke. Real shame. I built it myself. But I guess it does get a lot of weather out there."

"Okay."

"Fence's aren't my thing. I'm not a carpenter; I'm a psychology professor, actually. I do furniture just as a hobby. I built that coffee table." He pointed to the table right in front of Levi. "Let's hope I can work with fences just as well."

"Let's hope. Vera's upstairs."

Alex nodded and went to the stairs. He yelled for Vera's name, and she came pounding down the steps while tying her hair up into a bun. Levi looked away from the two and went back to pretending to read. He heard chatter about how the gate broke as the two went outside, and then everything grew quiet.

He pulled the letter back out from beneath his thigh and opened it. Hange's handwriting was scraggly and messy, and they misspelled a lot of words. In the month Levi had been around to witness them as a commander, he noticed that they really were capable of competent leadership—leadership on a higher level than just a squad captain. Even if they didn't think they could handle the job, Levi knew they could.

Hange's letter had been sitting on the pillow in his room; his Survey Corps cape had been resting on his bed, so Hange must have crossed over and ended up there and, upon seeing the cape, knew they were in the right place. It was smart of them to leave the letter. Levi had to let his lips curl up in a smirk for just a moment at the thought. He knew he wouldn't have thought of a backup letter. He wondered what Hange was doing at that minute. It was probably something with titans.

But the question of Vera crossing over with him was a tough one. It burned more in his mind every day, as if there was a timer over his head, a deadline telling him he had to know what to do soon.

Levi had never been indecisive until now. Vera was making him weak—but he loved her, and he knew it, even if he didn't want to admit it to her or to anyone else. How could he leave behind the one person he truly loved? How could he leave behind the one person who had the capacity to love him back for nothing more than being himself? He knew that, at some point, he might have to. The things he would have to give up were the cost of saving countless lives, and he knew that.

After a good thirty minutes of mulling over the decision, Levi got tired of sitting around. He decided to go out to the garage, grab the toolbox and some cleaning supplies, and take a hike. The things all got stuck into a backpack, and Levi then took Vera's keys and made sure to unlock all of the doors before leaving. As he walked around the other side of the house, Vera's spare backpack slung over his shoulder, he saw Vera watching over Alex with furrowed eyebrows.

Alex was kneeling in front of the fence gate with some metal tool in hand for bolts, shirt off in the August heat. As he passed, Levi took a good look at him. Alex had a rigid, dark brown face with rough features. His most prominent feature was the thin but consistent beard on his jawline, and his eyes were slimmed with intense focus. He wore focus kindly; most people looked angry while working on something, but his face expressed a generous curiosity instead of anger. He was someone people looked at and trusted immediately, Levi could tell.

Levi didn't mind leaving Vera alone with Alex. It wasn't that he didn't trust Vera; that wasn't at all true. Thomas was the one Levi had a bone to pick with. Alex looked like someone Levi could trust not to hurt Vera.

As he followed toward the path downhill, to the trails, he came up to Vera and gently pressed a kiss to her temple, his face expressionless. It made her eyes light up though, so he made a note about that in his head. In reality, he could feel his ears heating up at the sight of her, so he turned as quickly as he could.

"You're disappearing again."

"I'll be back before dark."

As he walked off, he heard Alex say, "This looks just about done. Can I pick some flowers on my way out? It's mine and Peter's anniversary tomorrow..."

Levi fell out of earshot and continued down the hill, eyes glazing over the hundreds of flowers in the fields.

At some point, Vera turned around and saw him at the entrance to the woods, which were about two hundred feet away from the base of the hill. It made her smile, the thought of him being so openly affectionate; even if it was just one kiss, it meant something to her. She wore a silly, school-girlish blush as she turned and look down at Alex. He gave her a funny grin.

"He seems good for you."

"I think he is. He makes me feel comfortable and happy." She sighed. "I wish I felt more secure though."

Alex stood and wiped off his brow. "In what way?"

"Levi and I want the same things, but I... I feel like I should wonder if he really likes me. He doesn't show it much. I love what we have, and I am happier than I have been in a long time, but... I don't know. I think I'm worried about how fragile what we have might be."

"I don't think you have to be. That's how I felt about Peter a few years ago when we were dating." He shrugged and flatly pressed his lips together. "My professor told me when I was engaged that 'you will fall out of love with that person.' Kind of like an 'it-comes-and-goes' sort of thing. And that scared me because I started to have to question all the time whether or not Peter had fallen out of love with me."

"That's what I mean."

"Yeah, I thought so, and it's not a stupid thought... but I've come to realize that... you never unintentionally fall out of love because, at some point, loving someone is a choice. You choose, after a while, to stay in love with them and love all of who they are. I know Levi and I don't know each other, but... he's been choosing you, and I think he'll keep choosing to love you."

"I hope so. I want to be able to choose him."

"Does he disappear like that often?" Alex asked in a completely different tone of voice.

Vera looked back out to the trail entrance, now without Levi's figure pacing into it, and shrugged. "He did yesterday. I assume he's hiking. He works out a lot."

"That'd explain the bag. Looked heavy. He must be jacked under that shirt."

Vera whistled. "Oh, he is."

"Good for you."

"Would be if we'd actually done anything yet."

"No sex?"

"No sex."

Alex asked, "And he's been here for how long?"

"Nine weeks, I think. Dating for one." She shrugged a bit. "It's a little unusual, but I'm not going to pressure him into it. When he's ready, we'll get to it."


End file.
